CV / Biography
Fellow at Trinity since 1999; appointed University Lecturer in 2007, following a two-year secondment as a team lawyer to the Law Commission for England and Wales to work on its Cohabitation project, 2005-7; Senior Lecturer from October 2011 and Reader from October 2017.
For information about studying Law at Trinity College, see www.trin.cam.ac.uk/law
Other appointments and positions
Director of the LLM (academic years 2018-2020)
Academic door tenant at 1 Hare Court, London (the specialist family law set), since April 2011.
Academic Fellow of Inner Temple, 2011-14.
Assistant editor of the Child and Family Law Quarterly.
Elected member of the Executive Council of the International Society of Family Law.
Associate fellow of the International Academy of Family Lawyers.
Deputy Director of Cambridge Family Law: www.family.law.cam.ac.uk/
Past chair of the Cambridge Socio-Legal Group, 2012-2016: www.law.cam.ac.uk/about-the-faculty/cambridge-socio-legal-group.php
Research and related activities
I am co-author of OUP title Family Law: Text, Cases, and Materials with Sonia Harris-Short and Rob George, 3rd edition, published in June 2015 - 4th edn due out in 2019.
I acted as research consultant to the Law Commission on its Matrimonial Property, Needs and Agreements project, and worked for the Family Justice Council on a project drafting guidance for litigants in person and for judges in financial remedy cases on divorce. I have consulted for the New Zealand Law Commission at various stages of its major Relationship Property project. I am currently involved in a large team working to produce guidance in relation to the treatment of Pensions on Divorce: see www.nuffieldfoundation.org/pensions-divorce-interdisciplinary-working-group. I act as an academic consultant on financial remedy and other family law appeals, most recently for the successful legal teams for the wives in Wyatt v Vince [2015] UKSC 14 and Work v Gray [2017] EWCA Civ 270, and for the husband in Owens v Owens [2018] UKSC 41.
Empirical research:
In 2010, I completed a one-year empirical study of the operation of the new cohabitation laws in Scotland with Professor Fran Wasoff and Dr Enid Mordaunt, University of Edinburgh, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. http://www.crfr.ac.uk/researchprojects/rp_cohabitation.html Our findings were referred to in the Supreme Court judgments in Gow v Grant [2012] UKSC 29.
I was a member of the large team working on an MoJ project on self-represented parties in private law family proceedings (led by Prof Liz Trinder), report published in November 2014: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/litigants-in-person-in-private-family-law-cases
I have also recently completed a project on public attitudes to child support law, using the British Attitude Survey (as consultant member of research team with Bryson, Ellman and McKay): http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/public-views-child-support; and was a member of the multi-disciplinary team in a project led by Caroline Bryson scoping the need for a dedicated new survey focusing on issues related to family separation: http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/data-understand-lives-separated-families
I am co-principal with Dr Emma Hitchings (Bristol) on a project examining the settlement of financial disputes on divorce. http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/final-settlements-financial-disputes-following-divorce The first findings from this study, focused on the "how, when and why" of settlement were published in November 2013 at http://www.bristol.ac.uk/law/research/researchpublications/2013/assemblingthejigsawpuzzle.pdf The second phase of the project examined the settlements reached: briefing paper was published in June 2018 at: http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/news/%E2%80%98big-money%E2%80%99-cases...
Comparative family law and policy:
I have a strong interest in the comparative and international aspects of family law, co-teaching a specialist LLM paper on Comparative Family Law & Policy, and co-founded the research centre Cambridge Family Law in 2016. Together with the Organising Committee of the Commission for European Family Law, Jens Scherpe and I hosted the highly successful fourth conference of the Commission in April 2010 on the future of family property in Europe. My work on the domestic and private international law aspects of marital property agreements was cited in argument before the Supreme Court in Radmacher v Granatino. I advised the New Zealand Law Commission during its major Relationship Property review in 2017.
Socio-legal and inter-disciplinary work:
As a longstanding member of the Cambridge Socio-Legal group, I have an interest in inter-disciplinary work, and have co-ordinated two book / workshop projects under the aegis of the Group. I am co-editor, with Rebecca Probert (Warwick) of a volume of social science essays bearing on the themes of money, property, relationships and separation. The aim of the project was to explore the empirical basis for the principles currently underpinning financial provision on divorce and property division on separation of cohabiting relationships, to see what light non-legal disciplines can cast on this difficult area for the law. In 2015, I co-edited a new volume on marriage rites and rights with Rebecca Probert and Perveez Mody (Social Anthropology).
Prior to Cambridge: undergraduate law degree at Nottingham (top graduating student), LLM at Cambridge. First teaching post at Christ Church and Lincoln College, Oxford.
