Dr Jennifer Russell

My primary area of interest is land law, becoming hooked on the subject as an undergraduate at Clare College, Cambridge. My interest matured following graduation in 2015, when I spent a year as Research Assistant working on land registration reform at the Law Commission – England and Wales’ law reform body. Following an LLM, also taken at Clare in 2016-17, I jumped ship to Trinity Hall where I underook AHRC-funded doctoral research. My PhD thesis examined the spaces made for consideration of ideas of ‘vulnerability’ within the law governing repossession of owner-occupied properties by mortgage lenders. I submitted my PhD thesis in the autumn of 2021 and passed my viva in January 2022. Before taking up the Herchel Smith Fellowship at Emmanuel, I also spent a year working as a Fellow in Law at Wadham College, Oxford, teaching Land Law and Trusts to second year undergraduates.

My immediate goals are to publish parts of the PhD and to embark on new research. I am currently working on a chapter for an edited collection on Politics and Policy within Private Law, which explains how various statutory and regulatory developments in (relatively) modern times have changed the nature of lenders' rights to possession of mortgaged land. In my current role, I also offer supervisions in Land Law and Equity as part of the Law Tripos.