Professor Naomi Creutzfeldt

Professor of Law and Society,
Co-Director of Research
Professor Naomi Creutzfeldt

About

Naomi Creutzfeldt joined Kent Law School in October 2022. Previously she was a Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Westminster, where she served as Research Director. Prior to that she was at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies in Oxford. Professor Creutzfeldt is a member of common room at Wolfson College, Oxford, and an affiliate researcher at the Max-Plank Institute for Legal History and Theory in Frankfurt.

Research interests

Professor Creutzfeldt is a socio-legal scholar. Her research can be divided into three strands under the umbrella of access to civil and administrative justice systems: (1) ADR and Ombudsmen; (2) digitalisation and vulnerabilities; and (3) health-justice partnerships. She has a special interest in how people who use the justice system in different countries access it, navigate it and perceive it, and why some people don’t use it at all, and what this means for theorizing and delivering justice. Professor Creutzfeldt’s research is comparative in nature. It is focussed on the interplay between legal systems, legal cultures and legal consciousness across different societies and explores how this interplay shapes the law.

She started her career at the Centre for Socio -Legal Studies at the University of Oxford where she was part of the Civil Justice Systems team. Here she developed her ADR and Ombuds research trajectory which included several publications and an ESRC FRL grant. Professor Creutzfeldt then moved to the University of Westminster, where she continued to work on ADR, access to justice and vulnerability. Together with Dr Chris Gill (Glasgow) she won an ESRC grant to explore energy poverty in Europe. Creutzfeldt was the co-chair of the academic panel of the Administrative Justice Council and, together with Professor Thomas, won an AHRC Networking grant to build an Administrative Justice Network. She is currently doing a Nuffield-funded project on exploring post pandemic trust in justice (with Dr Kyprianides, Prof Bradford, Prof Jackson and Heidi Bancroft). Part of this study asks why people have been cut off from accessing advice and justice. Another element is focused on digitalisation of the justice system and its (non) users. How can we ensure access to a digital justice system for vulnerable users? How can we enable users to become co-authors rather than simply objects of this system? A book based on this study is to be published by Bristol University Press in 2023.

Professor Creutzfeldt also has a keen interest in developing socio-legal research methods and theory across all levels of teaching; as well as tracing the history of socio-legal studies. She co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Socio-Legal Theory and Methods which brought together an international collection of early career and senior scholars. Together with Jen Hendry and Christian Boulanger, she is conducting a project on socio-legal trajectories in Germany and the UK.

She teaches on Public Law 1, Public Law 2 (co-convenor), and Research Methods in Law. 

Teaching

List of modules and module codes linking to module catalogue.

Undergraduate

Postgraduate

Supervision

Professor Creutzfeldt welcomes proposals for postgraduate research in the areas of comparative law, EU law, consumer law, social justice / vulnerability, and justice systems, explored through the lens of socio-legal studies. 

Professional

  • Member of the editorial board of public law (book review editor)
  • Law and Society Association, USA 2013 -
  • Socio-Legal Studies Association 2013-
  • Fellow of the European Law Institute (ELI), November 2017- 2020
  • Ombudsman Association, individual Associate Member 2013-2022.
  • Member of the Housing Ombudsman specialist vulnerability working group
  • Invited by HMCTS as expert member of sub-group on vulnerability and complex concepts and HMCTS audio-video hearing related questions 2019 -
  • Elected member of the JUSTICE board of trustees (Companies House and the Charity Commission as a Trustee of the charity), and JUSTICE council October 2018-
  • Co-chair of the Academic Panel of the Administrative Justice Council February 2018- May 2022
  • Member of Expert Network of Ministry of Justice, September 2018-
  • Member of the Dispute Resolution / Furniture Ombudsman standards board, 2017-
  • Member of the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships (FLF) scheme Panel Member to assess Round 6 FLF proposals (2021/22) and round 7 (2023/24)
  • Member of the AHRC panel for a project to scope possible future priorities for support for Law and Social Justice Research (2021)  
  • Member of the Ministry of Justice new Evidence Partnership Hub (academic network)
  • Member of the AHRC peer review college 2020 -2023
  • Member of the Public Law Project academic expert advisory panel on research methods and ethics (March 2019- ongoing)
  • Member of the Peer Review College UKRI: UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowships (UKRI FLF) programme 2018-2021
  • Member of the commissioning panel for the first round of the ESRC governance post Brexit calls (2018)
  • Expert evaluator for EC Horizon 2020 Energy Efficiency Call proposals as of November 2017
  • Member of the executive committee of the Socio-Legal Studies Association (2014-2020)
  • ESRC Peer Review College member (October 2015-2019)
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