•  BA (Oxon)
•  LLM (University of British Columbia)

Sonia graduated with a first class honours in law from Christ Church, Oxford, before obtaining her LLM (by research) from the University of British Columbia, Canada. She is currently Professor of Family Law and Policy at Birmingham University, having begun her academic career at the University of Durham. She has held visiting appointments in Canada, Australia and Sweden. She is a non-practising barrister and serves as a Deputy District Judge on the Northern Circuit.

•  Family Law 1: Law of Adult Relationships
•  Family Law 2: Child Law

• Family Law
• Law and Reproduction
• International Human Rights, especially the accommodation of cultural diversity, the rights of women, the rights of children and the rights of indigenous peoples.

Current doctoral supervision

Professor Harris-Short is currently supervising three doctoral students undertaking research in the following areas:

• The right to education and the Roma of Eastern Europe
• State Intervention into Family Life
• Sharia Family Law

Professor Harris-Short’s main areas of research are family law, gender and the law, and international human rights with a particular focus on protecting the rights of children within the family and wider community setting. She also has a strong interest in diversity in the legal profession.

She is the co-author of the major family law text: Harris-Short and Miles, (2011). Family Law: Text, Cases and Materials, 2^nd ed. (Oxford: OUP). She has published in leading journals on a wide range of family law issues including adoption, shared parenting, the rights of the child in the context of assisted reproduction, and family law and the HRA 1998. Developing out of her work on the rights of indigenous children, she has also published widely on the importance of accommodating cultural diversity within the human rights paradigm. She has recently completed a monograph entitled, Protecting the Vulnerable under International Law – Aboriginal Child Welfare and Self-government in Canada and Australia. The monograph was published by Ashgate Publishing in January 2012.

All Professor Harris-Short’s work has a particular focus on the need to recognise and respect the individual rights of marginalised family members. She is currently engaged in a project examining the potential for greater accommodation of sharia law within mainstream English family law.

Professor Harris-Short is the Director of the Centre for Professional Legal Education and Research. She serves on the University PG Research Progress and Awards Committee, the Humanities and Social Sciences Ethical Review of Research Committee and the Law School Management Group.

Outside the University, Professor Harris-Short is a Deputy District Judge (Northern Circuit) and has previously served on the Family Committee of the Judicial Studies Board and the Durham Local Family Justice Council. She has recently been appointed as the special academic advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on Adoption and Children legislation.

She is a qualified, non-practising barrister and holds an honorary tenancy at St Philips Chambers, Birmingham

Books:

• S. Harris-Short and J. Miles (2011). Family Law: Text, Cases and Materials, 2^nd ed. Oxford: OUP.
• S. Harris-Short (2012). Protecting the vulnerable under international law: Aboriginal child welfare and self-government in Canada and Australia. Ashgate.

Articles and Chapters in Books:

• S. Harris-Short (2010). “Resisting the march towards 50/50 shared residence. Rights, welfare and equality in post-separation families.” Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 32: 257-274.
• S. Harris-Short (2010). “A feminist judgment in Evans v Amicus Healthcare Ltd and Others” in Hunter, McGlynn and Rackley (eds), Feminist Judgments: From Theory to Practice, Hart Publishing.
• S. Harris-Short (2009). “Regulating Reproduction – frozen embryos, consent and the equality myth” in R. Deazley and S. Smith (eds.) The Legal, Medical and Cultural Regulation of the Body: Transformation and Transgression. Ashgate. 
• S. Harris-Short, (2008). ‘Making and Breaking Family Life: Adoption, the State and Human Rights’.Journal of Law and Society, 35(1): 28.
• S. Harris-Short, (2007). ‘Self-Government in Canada: A Successful Model for the Decolonisation of Aboriginal Child Welfare?’ in S. Tierney (ed.) Accommodating Cultural Diversity: Contemporary Issues in Theory and Practice. (Ashgate).
• S. Harris-Short, (2007). ‘Children’s Rights and Cultural Diversity’ in Institute of International Public Law and International Relations, Thesaurus Acroasium, vol. XXXIII, Multiculturalism and International Law.
• S. Harris-Short, (2007). ‘Family Law and the Human Rights Act 1998: Judicial Restraint or Revolution?’ in H. Fenwick, R. Masterman and & G. Phillipson (eds.) Judicial Reasoning under the UK Human Rights Act. Cambridge: CUP (reprint).  
• S. Harris-Short, (2005). ‘Family Law and the Human Rights Act 1998: Judicial Restraint or Revolution?’Child and Family Law Quarterly, 17(3): 329 - 362.
• S. Harris-Short, (2003). ‘An “Identity Crisis” in the International Law of Human Rights? The Challenge of Reproductive Cloning’ International Journal of Children’s Rights, 11: 333 – 368.
• S. Harris-Short, (2003). ‘International Human Rights Law – Imperialist, Inept and Ineffective? Cultural Relativism and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child’ Human Rights Quarterly, 25 (1): 130 – 181.
• D. Bonner, H. Fenwick and S. Harris-Short, (2003). ‘Judicial Approaches to the Human Rights Act’International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 52: 549 – 586.
• S. Harris-Short, (2002). ‘Re B (Adoption: Natural Parent) Putting the child at the heart of adoption?’Child and Family Law Quarterly, 14(3): 325 – 341.
• S. Harris-Short, (2001). ‘The Adoption and Children Bill – a fast track to failure?’ Child and Family Law Quarterly, 13(4): 405 – 431.
• S. Harris-Short, (2001). ‘Listening to ‘the Other’? The Convention on the Rights of the Child’, MelbourneJournal of International Law, 2: 304 – 350.
• Stem Cell Research: The Legal and Ethical Issues - Written Submission of Evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Stem Cell Research by the Universities of Durham and Newcastle (under the banner of the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute, Centre for Life, Newcastle), June 2001.