Dr Catherine Mitchell

• LLB Hons (Essex)
• LLM (Aberd)
• PhD (Hull)
• FHEA

Catherine joined Birmingham Law School in 2016 after 23 years in the Law School at the University of Hull. She graduated in Law from the University of Essex in 1988. She also holds a Masters degree in Jurisprudence from the University of Aberdeen (1992).  She gained her PhD through published works in 2015. Her main teaching responsibilities are in Contract Law, Commercial Law and related subjects.   She became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2015.

• Contract law 
• International Sale of Goods
• Widening Horizons: Key Moments in Law and Policy
• Law in Action 1.

Catherine would be interested in supervising research students on topics in commercial contract law, particularly contract interpretation and the role of commercial expectations and informal norms in contract law.

She has supervised students working on electronic contracting, EU contract law and the role of standard terms and conditions in business contracting.

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

Catherine's research interests lie primarily within the field of the private law of obligations. In particular all aspects of contract law including nature and theory of contractual obligations, remedies, consumer and commercial contracts, and the relationship between contract, tort and restitution. She is also interested in legal theory, particularly legal reasoning, interpretation in law and law and literature.

Her most recent monograph, a second edition of Interpretation of Contracts (Routledge), was published in 2018. Previous works include Contract Law And Contract Practice: Bridging The Gap Between Legal Reasoning And Commercial Expectation (Hart 2013) and the first edition of Interpretation of Contracts (Routledge Cavendish 2007). She has published articles and short papers on a variety of contract issues: exclusion clauses, third party rights, restitutionary damages, entire agreement clauses, networks and contract law, and the law relating to behavioural obligations in contracts.

Her current project - Vanishing Contract Law - is supported by a Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. A monograph arising from the project will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.

• External Examiner on LLB degrees, Dublin City University (2014-present)
• Member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Contract Law.