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The University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NZ, T +44 (0)1227 764000
Law LLM, MPhil, PhD
This is a research programme within the Law subject area.
Outline
We welcome applications for research degrees in a wide range of areas. We recommend you contact the School informally before applying, and you should accompany your application with a brief (two- to four-page) outline of the research project you envisage and your intended methodology. You may find it helpful to discuss your project informally with an appropriate member of staff (contact details are on our website) or with the Director of Postgraduate Research.
Key facts
- Subject area: Law
- Location: Canterbury and Brussels
- School: Kent Law School
- Duration: LLM one year full-time or two years part-time, MPhil two years full-time or three years part-time, PhD registration three to four years full-time or five to six years part-time.
- Start: At any time but preferably in September.
- Fees and funding: More info
- Entry requirements: A first or good second class honours degree in law or a relevant subject. A Master's degree is recommended, but not essential. Please also check our general entry requirements (including English language requirements).
Research areas
Kent Law School is a thriving centre of theoretically informed, critical and socio-legal research. The most recent Research Assessment Exercise rated Kent Law School as the 6th best Law School in the UK (and 4th for the proportion of research classified as world-class and internationally excellent). The School has traditionally approached the teaching of law both critically and contextually, encouraging students to develop their evaluative skills and to locate law within its broader social, historical and political context.
This approach is also reflected in much of the School's research activities and output. In particular, it enjoys an international reputation for innovative, critical and interdisciplinary approaches to law, with special expertise in law, gender and sexuality.
Critical Commercial Law and Business Law and Regulation
Kent Law School has established a rich tradition of critical scholarship on the legal regulation of the business practices and commercial relations of market economies that attracts postgraduate students and researchers from around the world. Staff and postgraduate student research features theoretical, empirical, comparative and doctrinal studies and spans a wide range of critical socio-legal approaches to commercial, business and financial institutions. The ongoing scholarship of Kent's experts informs their research-led teaching in such fields as consumer debt and bankruptcy, secured credit, intellectual property, international financial institutions, economic development, international trade, international business transactions, commercial arbitration, international labour regulation, corporate governance, banking law, regulation of personal financial services, e-commerce and information technology law.
Critical International Law
International law at KLS has been characterised by its critical content. Research generally develops the theme that international law is not apolitical and that its political ideology reflects the interests of those in power in powerful states. Research and teaching is conducted at both the Canterbury campus and the Brussels centre. The Centre for Critical International Law, based at the University of Kent (Canterbury campus) draws upon the strengths of the teaching and research at Kent and promotes the study of International Law.
Criminal Justice
Much of the School's research activity in criminal justice takes place in co-operation with the Department of Criminology and under the auspices of the Kent Criminal Justice Centre. Established in 1996, the Centre co-ordinates and encourages research in the field of criminal justice, and develops teaching and education initiatives, especially in co-operation with local criminal justice agencies.
Environmental Law
The Law School has been established as a recognised centre of excellence in research and graduate teaching in environmental law, spanning international, EC and national law and policy. Current research interests include climate change, water law, biodiversity conservation, regulation and enforcement, and trade.
European and Comparative Law
European and Comparative Law is being conducted both at an individual level and at the Kent Centre for European and Comparative Law, which was established in 2004 with a view to providing a framework for the further development of the Law School's research and teaching activities in this area. Research and teaching reaches from general areas of comparative and European public and private law to more specialised areas and specific projects.
Gender and Sexuality
Home to the Kent Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality, Kent Law School makes a significant contribution to the development of feminist perspectives on law, both nationally and internationally. The group produces wide-ranging, interdisciplinary work, drawing on a broad range of intellectual trajectories in addition to legal studies, including political theory, philosophy, sociology, political economy, cultural studies, film, geography and history. An important aspect of its work is to explore how sexuality is produced through political categories of difference and how it is governed. The research carried out by the group demonstrates a shared preoccupation with inequality and social change. KLS also hosts the internationally renowned journal, Feminist Legal Studies.
Health Care Law and Ethics
A number of KLS staff have interests in the area of health care law and ethics, focusing in particular on issues relating to human reproduction. Much of the research carried out by scholars in this cluster is critical and theoretical and has a strong interdisciplinary flavour. In addition to conducting their own research projects, staff have developed strong and fruitful collaborations with ethicists and medical professionals. KLS is home to a well-established LLM programme in Medical Law and Ethics.
Law, Politics and Culture
This broad, interdisciplinary field reflects KLS's interest in how power intersects, and is expressed and constituted through, institutional structures, and cultural representations and forms of knowledge production. Scholarship and research in this field centres on social cleavages and the systemic generation of inequality, involving class, religion, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, and geography. It also interrogates the systemic character of inequality and power, drawing on recent post-structural theory. Work in this field at KLS is both domestic and transnational, centring on a range of scales from small micro-communities to nation-states and international agencies.
Law and Political Economy
Law and its relation to political economy are addressed from a variety of angles, exploring the micro- and macro-level of economical regulations as well as its theoretical aspects.
Legal Theories and Philosophy
While feminist and critical legal theories are focal points at Kent Law School, the departmental expertise equally covers classical jurisprudence,
the history of philosophy and the application of philosophy to law. A number of members of staff also have strong interests in health care ethics.
Property Law
Kent Law School's property lawyers have a range of overlapping interests in both global and local property issues. Their work covers the environment, housing, community land, social enterprise and urban design, as well as the question of intellectual property. They have links with anthropologists working at the University and have run a successful series of workshops exploring common interests. Their research draws on a multiplicity of theoretical perspectives including postcolonialism, feminism and Foucault.
Show all
|Key facts
- Subject area: Law
- Location: Canterbury and Brussels
- School: Kent Law School
- Duration: LLM one year full-time or two years part-time, MPhil two years full-time or three years part-time, PhD registration three to four years full-time or five to six years part-time.
- Start: At any time but preferably in September.
- Fees and funding: More info
- Entry requirements: A first or good second class honours degree in law or a relevant subject. A Master's degree is recommended, but not essential. Please also check our general entry requirements (including English language requirements).
Staff research
Full details of staff research interests can be found on our website.
Professor Anneli Albi: Professor
Comparative constitutional law; EU constitutional law; EU enlargements; European Neighbourhood Policy.
Dr Donatella Alessandrini: Senior Lecturer
International trade theory and practice; neo-liberalism; international political economy; development studies. Recent publications include: Developing Countries and the Multilateral Trade Regime: The Failure and Promise of the WTO's Development Mission (2010).
Dr Yutaka Arai: Reader
International humanitarian law (including part of international criminal law); the relationship between international humanitarian law and international human rights law. Recent publications include: The Law of Occupation: Continuity and Change of International Humanitarian Law, and Its Interaction with International Human Rights Law (2009).
Dr Kate Bedford: Senior Lecturer
Gender, sexuality and international political economy; critical development studies; the World Bank; Latin America, heteronormativity and social policy; gambling regulation and economic regeneration, especially bingo; UK equalities law and policy. Recent publications include: Developing Partnerships: Gender, Sexuality and the Reformed World Bank (2009).
Dr Anne Bottomley: Reader
Property practices in relation to urban planning and architecture – drawing from Deleuze and theoretical perspectives emerging in anthropology and social theory. Debates surrounding theoretical perspectives within feminism. Recent publications include: Changing Contours of Domestic Life, Family and Law: Caring and Sharing (co-ed, 2009).
Dr Ruth Cain: Lecturer
Regulation and representation of reproduction and parenting, especially maternity, tracking relationships between law, literature, popular culture and the media, and how these shape perceptions of gender, sexuality and embodiment, health care law, including mental health law; the gendering of capitalism, neo-imperialism and post 9/11 trauma.
Dr Helen Carr: Reader
Housing law and social welfare, with particular interests in regulation of the poor and gendered and the racialised dimensions of that regulation. Recent publications include: Law for Social Workers (co-author, 2010); Skills for Law Students (co-author, 2009).
Dr Emilie Cloatre: Lecturer
The intersection between law and contemporary ‘science and society' issues, for example patent law and access to health care, and the regulatory networks of climate change. This is particularly (although not exclusively) in the context of developing countries.
Professor Joanne Conaghan: Professor
Labour law (especially work and family issues); equality law and theory; feminist legal studies; critical legal theory; tort law; legal regulation of violence against women. Recent publications include: Feminist Legal Studies (ed, 2009); The New Oxford Companion to Law (co-ed, 2008).
Dr Vicky Conway: Lecturer
Policing and police accountability; miscarriages of justice and the systems put in place by states to provide remedies in such cases. Recent publications include: The Blue Wall of Silence: the Morris Tribunal and Police Accountability in Ireland (2010); Irish Criminal Justice: Theory, Process and Procedure (co-author, 2010); Policing Twentieth Century Ireland: A History of an Garda Síochána (2012).
Professor Davina Cooper: Professor
Social and political theory; cultural geography; feminism and sexuality; governance and radical politics; Utopian studies. Recent publications include: Intersectionality and Beyond: Law, Power, and the Politics of Location (co-ed, 2009); Intimate Public Practices: A Methodological Challenge (ed, 2009).
Dr Eleanor Curran: Lecturer
Hobbes; rights theory and the history of rights theory; political theory; moral theory; jurisprudence.
Dr Karen Devine: Lecturer
The law of obligations; tortious legal issues, particularly those relating to the collection, storage and use of human tissue; decision-making in health care and the role of informed consent; medical law and ethics generally.
Lisa Dickson: Lecturer
Forensic science and the law; evidence and the trial process; general areas of criminal justice.
Dr Maria Drakopoulou: Reader
Feminist theory; feminist jurisprudence; legal theory and philosophy; legal history; Roman law; equity and trusts. Recent publications include: Feminist Encounters with Legal Philosophy (ed, forthcoming 2012); Rethinking Equality Projects in Law: Feminist Challenges (co-ed, 2008).
Máiréad Enright: Lecturer
Legal regulation of culture and religion, and particularly the effects of legal engagement with traditionally ‘private' aspects of religious practice for ‘public' conceptions of membership.
Professor John Fitzpatrick: Professor; Director of Kent Law Clinic
Human rights law; constitutional law; public legal services; legal process.
Dr Simone Glanert: Senior Lecturer
Comparative legal studies; legal translation; statutory interpretation; European law; French law and German law. Recent publications include: De la traductibilité du droit (2011).
Dr Emily Grabham: Senior Lecturer
Citizenship; belonging and corporeality; feminist and queer theories of embodiment; labour law; welfare reform and its connection to work/family policy. Recent publications include: Intersectionality and Beyond: Law, Power and the Politics of Location (co-ed, 2009).
Professor Nick Grief: Professor
Public international law, human rights and EU law, with particular reference to the legal status of nuclear weapons.
Dr Emily Haslam: Lecturer
Public international law; international criminal law; civil society.
Martin Hedemann-Robinson: Senior Lecturer
European Union and international environmental law, notably in relation to law enforcement.
Professor Didi Herman: Professor; Head of School
Gender and sexuality; race, religion and ethnicity; popular culture; social movement; law reform. Recent publications include: An Unfortunate Coincidence: Jews, Jewishness, and English Law (2011); Intersectionality and Beyond: Law, Power and the Politics of Location (co-ed, 2009).
Dr Kirsty Horsey: Senior Lecturer
Human reproduction and genetics, particularly where these overlap with issues in family law; legal education. Recent publications include: Skills for Law Students (co-author, 2009); Tort Law (co-author, 2009).
Professor William Howarth: Professor
Environmental and ecological law, with particular emphasis on the legal protection of the aquatic environment and the ecosystems that it supports. Recent publications include: Halsbury's Laws of England, Water and Waterways (ed, 2009); Halsbury's Laws of England, Environmental Quality and Public Health (ed, 2010).
Professor Rosemary Hunter: Professor
Feminist legal scholarship including family law, access to justice, domestic violence, women's employment (including women in the legal profession and women judges), anti-discrimination law, and dispute resolution; the interface between law and society, and people's encounters with the legal system. Recent publications include: Enforcing Human Rights in Australia: An Evaluation of the New Regime (co-author, 2010); Feminist Judgments: From Theory to Practice (co-ed, 2010); Domestic Violence Law Reform and Women's Experience in Court: The Implementation of Feminist Reforms in Civil Proceedings (2008); Rethinking Equality Projects in Law: Feminist Challenges (co-ed, 2008).
Professor Paddy Ireland: Professor
Historical development of company law; corporate governance and theory; law and neo-liberalism; critical legal theory.
Nick Jackson: Senior Lecturer
Land law; housing; intellectual property and scholarship of learning and teaching.
Per Laleng: Lecturer
Law of tort – focused on the concept of causation particularly in the context of industrial and other diseases. Other research interests include law and football, and law and photography.
Sian Lewis-Anthony: Lecturer
International human rights law, in particular, the right to a fair trial and the issue of the independence and impartiality of the judiciary.
Dr Robin Mackenzie: Reader
Bioscience and law; body modification; constructions of addiction; death and the dying process; enhancement; feminist perspectives; genetics and other new technologies; neuroethics and law; neuroscience; propertisation and biovalue; psychoactive substances; public health governance; reprogenetics; strategic rhetoric in regulation; surrogacy; critical and cultural theory applied to all the above.
Dr Alex Magaisa: Senior Lecturer
Financial services regulation, with special focus on international finance centres (offshore finance jurisdictions); the law relating to corporate groups, with special interest in responsibility for corporate torts; intellectual property and developing countries; general interest in the interaction between law and politics in Africa.
Dr Francesco Messineo: Lecturer
Public international law with an emphasis on international human rights law (international refugee law, the use of force and the law of armed conflict, international criminal law, the history and philosophy of public international law) EU refugee and immigration law and Italian immigration, asylum and refugee law.
Dr Gbenga Oduntan: Senior Lecturer
Private and public international law; international courts and tribunals; arbitration; international commercial law; land and maritime boundary and territorial disputes; air and space law; international economic law; immigration and asylum law; constitutional law; criminal justice; scientific and technological issues in policing. Recent publications include: Sovereignty and Jurisdiction in Airspace and Outer Space: Legal Criteria for Spatial Delimitation (2011).
Sebastian Payne: Lecturer
The Crown; constitutional reform; the royal prerogative; oversight issues relating to the intelligence and security services; decision making and its relation to law.
Dr Stephen Pethick: Lecturer
Jurisprudence, with emphasis on epistemology and metaphysics and the law; philosophy of language and the law; reasoning and the law; the concept of coherence and its use in legal theory and legal reasoning; the legal theory of Francis Bacon and in the history of legal ideas from the early modern period onwards; analytic legal theory; legal history; the law of evidence.
Nick Piska: Lecturer
A critical engagement with private law, particularly in the area of equity and trusts, and a broader interest in the figure of the equitable subject and the ways in which equitable subjects are produced in modernity.
David Radlett: Lecturer
The shift in power from the elected and notionally representative and accountable to the unelected and obviously unrepresentatitive and unaccountable.
Professor Iain Ramsay: Professor
Regulation of consumer markets at the national, regional and international level, with a particular interest in issues of credit and insolvency, commercial credit and commercial law, focusing on the role of credit law in development. Recent publications include: Consumer Credit, Debt and Bankruptcy: Comparative and International Perspectives (co-ed, 2009); Handbook of Research on International Consumer Law (co-ed, 2010).
Professor Bernard Ryan: Professor
Immigration law, incorporating aspects of UK law, EU law and international law. Recent publications include: Extraterritorial Immigration Control: Legal Challenges (co-ed, 2010).
Professor Harm Schepel: Professor
Legal sociology; international and European economic law. Recent publications include: State and Market in European Union Law (co-author, 2009).
Professor Sally Sheldon: Professor
Medical ethics and law, particularly with reference to reproductive issues; legal regulation of gender and sexuality; fatherhood. Recent publications include: Fragmenting Fatherhood (co-author, 2008).
Alan Story: Reader
Intellectual property (domestic and global), especially critical approaches to patent and copyright law; critical intellectual property theory; the politics and economics of intellectual property; copyright issues in the global south. Recent publications include: An Alternative Primer on National and International Copyright Law in the Global South: Eighteen Questions and Answers (2009).
Dr Sophie Vigneron: Lecturer
French public and private law; English tort law; art law; the Europeanisation of private law; cultural heritage law.
John Wightman: Senior Lecturer; Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences
Theory, history, and empirical work relating to private law, especially tort and contract.
Professor Toni Williams: Professor
Regulation and governance of economic development and market relations; regulation of consumer financial services; the implications of information technology for the regulation of consumer markets.
Dr Simone Wong: Senior Lecturer
Equity; banking and finance; cohabitation and other domestic relationships. Recent publications include: Changing Contours of Domestic Life, Family and Law: Caring and Sharing (co-ed, 2009).
Further information:
Key facts
- Subject area: Law
- Location: Canterbury and Brussels
- School: Kent Law School
- Duration: LLM one year full-time or two years part-time, MPhil two years full-time or three years part-time, PhD registration three to four years full-time or five to six years part-time.
- Start: At any time but preferably in September.
- Fees and funding: More info
- Entry requirements: A first or good second class honours degree in law or a relevant subject. A Master's degree is recommended, but not essential. Please also check our general entry requirements (including English language requirements).
Contact details
Admissions enquiries
T: +44 (0)1227 827272
E: information@kent.ac.uk
Postgraduate Office, Kent Law School, Eliot College,
University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NS, UK
T: +44 (0)1227 824595
F: +44 (0)1227 827442
E: klspgoffice@kent.ac.uk
Key facts
- Subject area: Law
- Location: Canterbury and Brussels
- School: Kent Law School
- Duration: LLM one year full-time or two years part-time, MPhil two years full-time or three years part-time, PhD registration three to four years full-time or five to six years part-time.
- Start: At any time but preferably in September.
- Fees and funding: More info
- Entry requirements: A first or good second class honours degree in law or a relevant subject. A Master's degree is recommended, but not essential. Please also check our general entry requirements (including English language requirements).
How to apply
Before applying, please read our ‘How to apply’ section.
You can then go straight to the online application form by clicking the programme below:
Key facts
- Subject area: Law
- Location: Canterbury and Brussels
- School: Kent Law School
- Duration: LLM one year full-time or two years part-time, MPhil two years full-time or three years part-time, PhD registration three to four years full-time or five to six years part-time.
- Start: At any time but preferably in September.
- Fees and funding: More info
- Entry requirements: A first or good second class honours degree in law or a relevant subject. A Master's degree is recommended, but not essential. Please also check our general entry requirements (including English language requirements).