Dr Tracey Varnava

Tracey studied Law at the University of Kent and Criminology at Cambridge University before beginning her academic career as a lecturer in law at the University of Leicester. She has a longstanding interest in legal education and training and was involved in establishing and managing the National (later UK) Centre for Legal Education, and in 2011 was seconded by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to oversee the production of the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) research that resulted in significant changes in the route to qualification for aspiring lawyers. In 2017 Tracey began a full-time PhD on the governance of street homelessness in Canterbury and this has opened up a new strand to her career as a researcher in the broad areas of housing, homelessness, and governance.

In 2022, Tracey was recruited as a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton on the Tackling Housing Debt and Eviction project funded by Abrdn Financial Fairness Trust. In 2024, Tracey (re)joined KLS as a Research Associate working alongside Professor Naomi Creutzfeldt and Dr Fanni Gyurko on the Understanding Digital Justice Journeys project funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

Housing and home loss

Urban governance

Exclusion and marginalisation

Tracey is a member of the Society of Legal Scholars and the Socio-Legal Studies Association.

In recognition of her work in the field of legal education and training, in 2012 Tracey was awarded the Association of Law Teachers prize for Outstanding Contribution to Legal Education. She is also the recipient of the Inaugural annual Roger Mills Prize for Innovation in Learning and Teaching presented by the Centre for Distance Education, University of London Worldwide in 2018.