Mairead Enright

Mairead Enright

Birmingham Law School
Reader in Feminist Legal Studies

Contact details

Telephone
(0)121 414 9518
Email
m.enright@bham.ac.uk
Twitter
@maireadenright
View my research portal
Address
Birmingham Law School
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Máiréad Enright’s research is in feminist legal studies and critical legal theory, with a particular focus on law and religion. She has written on issues including reproductive justice, law reform and grassroots organising, illegality in social movements, responses to historical injustice and obstetric violence.  She often works with and advises groups campaigning around reproductive rights and historical gender-based violence, especially in Ireland and Northern Ireland. She is also interested in collaborations between artists and legal scholars. From 2020-2021, she was a Leverhulme Research Fellow. Her project, ‘Laws’ Inheritances’ examined how recent state efforts to redress institutional abuse in Ireland repeat or repurpose the legal structures that enabled the original abuse, and considers how that legal history could be inherited otherwise.

ORCID: 0000-0003-0627-9682

Qualifications

  • BCL (NUI)
  • MA (King’s College London)
  • Barrister-at-Law (King’s Inns)

Biography

I joined Birmingham Law School as a Senior Lecturer in September 2016, having previously lectured at Kent Law School. In 2020-2022, I held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. I tweet at @maireadenright.

 

Teaching

  • Contract Law.
  • Family Law.

Postgraduate supervision

I am willing to supervise research students in the following areas:

Gender, law and Religion, particularly from feminist or critical legal perspectives.
Politics of reproductive justice.
'Historical' institutional abuse.
Law, activism and social movements.
I am happy to answer email queries from prospective students before submission of an official proposal.

Find out more - our PhD Law  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

I have a range of research interests, grounded in feminist legal theory, and critical theoretical approaches to legal agency, legal pluralism, law-breaking, resistance and disobedience. My research to date has focused, in particular, on how women may strategically manipulate legal processes (contract formation, private law litigation, vernacular dissident legal interpretation and the feminist drafting of legal texts) to resist religious or cultural dispossession. A related strand of my research concerns states’ use of legal discourse to construct and maintain exclusionary politics of national identity, whether with or against religion. My research in this respect has involved close examination of the intersections of law, religious power and gendered national identity projects and the politics of reproductive justice in Ireland (particularly the early family planning movement, abortion rights and reparations for historical obstetric violence). 

Other activities

Legal consultant for artwork for The Touching Contract (Dublin, 2016)

Mairead is a founding member of Lawyers for Choice, a public legal education group that aims to enhance understanding of abortion regulation in Ireland. 

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Enright, M 2021, 'Book Review: Scottish Feminist Judgments: (Re)Creating Law From the Outside In', Social and Legal Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663921992106

Enright, M & Kinsella, T 2021, 'Legal Aesthetics in The Touching Contract: Memory, Exposure and Transformation', Law Culture and the Humanities, pp. 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/1743872120987113

Enright, M 2021, 'The touching contract', Paper Visual Art, vol. 12.

Enright, M, McNeily, K & De Londras, F 2020, 'Abortion activism, legal change, and taking feminist law work seriously', The Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 3, pp. 359. <https://nilq.qub.ac.uk/index.php/nilq/article/view/317>

Enright, M 2020, 'Four pieces on repeal: notes on art aesthetics and the struggle against Ireland’s abortion law', Feminist Review, vol. 124, no. 1, pp. 104-123. https://doi.org/10.1177/0141778919897583

Enright, M & Ring, S 2020, 'State legal responses to historical institutional abuse: shame, sovereignty and epistemic injustice', Eire-Ireland; a journal of Irish studies, vol. 55, no. 1-2, pp. 68-99. https://doi.org/10.1353/eir.2020.0003

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Enright, M & Ring, S 2020, State Shame, Sovereignty and Legal Responses to Historical Institutional Abuse. in C Fischer & A Mahon (eds), Philosophical Perspectives on Contemporary Ireland. Routledge.

Enright, M 2018, 'No. I won’t go back’: National time, trauma and legacies of symphysiotomy in Ireland. in S Benyon-Jones & E Grabham (eds), Law and Time. 1st edn, Social Justice, Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315167695-3

Chapter

Enright, M 2021, Contract, the state, and the Magdalene Laundries. in M Haughton, M McAuliffe & E Pine (eds), Legacies of the Magdalen Laundries: Commemoration, gender, and the postcolonial carceral state. Manchester University Press, pp. 193-216.

Enright, M 2020, "Like a Dog": Remaking the Irish Law of Institutional Abuse. in S Browne (ed.), The Law is a White Dog: TULCA Festival of Visual Arts. TULCA Publishing, Galway, Ireland, pp. 111 - 135.

De Londras, F & Enright, M 2020, The Only Lawyer on the Panel’: Anti-Choice Lawfare in the Battle for Abortion Law Reform. in K Browne & S Calkin (eds), After Repeal: Rethinking Abortion Politics. Zed Books.

Enright, M 2019, Abortion law in Ireland: Reflecting on reform. in L Black & P Dunne (eds), Law and Gender in Modern Ireland: Critique and Reform. 1 edn, Hart Publishing, Oxford, UK, pp. 55-70. <https://www.bloomsburyprofessional.com/uk/law-and-gender-in-modern-ireland-9781509917211/>

Enright, M & O'Donoghue, A 2019, The Northern/Irish feminist judgments project: experiments in feminist legal research. in L Cahillane & J Schweppe (eds), Case studies in legal research methodologies: reflections on theory and practice. Clarus Press.

Enright, M 2018, Contract Law. in Great Debates in Gender and the Law. Great Debates in Law, Red Globe Press, London.

Enright, M 2018, Health (Family Planning) Act 1979. in E Rackley & R Auchmuty (eds), Women's Legal Landmarks. 1st edn, Hart Publishing, pp. 349-355.

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

Mairead has expertise in abortion law, feminism in Ireland, historical injustice and reproductive justice.

Expertise

  • Feminist legal studies 
  • Law and religion
  • Reproductive rights
  • Irish Studies

Culture and collections

Schools, institutes and departments

Services and facilities