Equality, Gender, and Feminist Legal Studies

We are concerned with questions of social inequalities and the construction of gender norms in legal processes and mechanisms. We approach these issues through an interdisciplinary theoretical lens, including feminist legal theory, feminist TWAIL, abolition feminism, black feminist thought, queer legal theories, and feminist decolonial perspectives.

We foster critical research that examines gender inequality that attends to the relationship between gender, sexuality, class, and race in national and international legal operations. This includes a number of areas related to gender equality, such as gender-based violence, reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, policy-making and professional practices around issues of gender and sexuality.

The programme of the theme facilitates and supports research, offers mentoring, and opportunities for collaborations through a variety of accessible events, both online and in-person, including coffee-chats and discussion circles, panel discussions, reading group, public lectures, and online/in-person presentation opportunities for doctoral researchers.

Staff researching in this theme

Shaimaa Abdelkarim’s research addresses questions on coloniality, human rights and resistance.
Kate Bedford's research focuses on law and development, and gender and political economy. She also researches gambling law and regulation.
Charlotte Bendall is a generalist family lawyer, whose interests lie both in adult relationships and the law around children, and she is currently conducting research into grandparents' experiences of seeking contact with grandchildren.
Meghan Campbell is a Reader in International Human Rights Law exploring women's equality particularly in relation to gender-based poverty.
Fiona de Londras' work concerns the role and function of rights in contentious policy fields, inquiring into how (if at all) rights shape the making of law and policy in complex contexts of, for example, counter-terrorism, reproductive rights, and the implementation of international legal standards.
Mairead Enright works on gender and the law, with a particular focus on reproductive rights and historical injustice.
Rosie Harding uses empirical and conceptual socio-legal methods to investigate the place of law in everyday life, with a focus on social justice, family law and disability law.
Atina Krajewska is a health lawyer specialising in global health law and sexual and reproductive justice, developing the sociology of health law.
Maureen Mapp researches relational law, gender and pluriversal justice in the physical and digital world.
Manisha Mathews’s research focuses on work-family reconciliation policies, human rights and gender equality.
Natasa Mavronicola's research examines various dimensions of human rights law and practice, including the nature and scope of absolute rights, the (non-paradigmatic) interpretation of key human rights such as the right to life and the right not to be tortured or ill-treated, and the relationship between human rights and state penality.
Karen McAuliffe's research focuses on the field of law and language, and she has particular interests in multilingual law production and the relationship between law, language and translation in multilingual legal orders. She is also interested in the legal recognition of sign languages and Deaf legal theory.
Lydia Morgan's research focuses on conceptual analysis and critiques of secrecy, transparency, accountability, national security and counter-terrorism.
Emma Oakley's research uses socio-legal approaches to investigate legal and regulatory decision-making
Rehana Parveen is interested in English Family Law, Islamic Family Law, Muslim women, religious tribunals, decolonising the law and decolonising the curriculum.
Lucía Berro Pizzarossa is a British Academy International Fellow at Birmingham Law School and an Affiliated researcher of the Global Health and Rights Project at The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.
Silvana Tapia Tapia develops an anticolonial feminist critique of penal systems and international human rights, foregrounding the practices of anti-carceral social movements.
Lisa Webley's research considers the regulation, education and ethicality and professionalism of the legal profession, and broader access to justice and rule of law concerns.

If you would like to get involved with the activities of the theme or have any ideas, queries, or requests on accessibility of our activities, please get in touch with Dr Charlotte Bendall c.l.bendall@bham.ac.uk and Dr Shaimaa Abdelkarim s.abdelkarim@bham.ac.uk.