Senior Lecturer in Family Law, Module lead for UG Family Law and MLaw Equity & Trusts. Member of teaching team for Human Rights in Practice module (LLM). International Students Liaison Officer/Exchange Students Advisor.  

My Family law research focuses mainly - but not exclusively - on the various rights of adoptees e.g. those connected to the concept of origin deprivation. Adoption losses are also analysed within the fields of law and humanities, in an effort to make sense of the various policies, customs, beliefs, and misapprehensions that have served to perpetuate certain myths surrounding adoption and inequalities of birth status. 

My second monograph - 'Genetic Stigma in Law and Literature: Orphanhood, Adoption, and the Right to Reunion' (Palgrave, 2024) builds upon my earlier work 'A Law of Blood-ties: The 'Right' to Access Genetic Ancestry' (Springer, 2014). I have also edited a 35-chapter cross-disciplinary collection 'Employability via Higher Education: Sustainability as Scholarship' (2019) as part of a Senior Faculty Fellowship on Learning & Teaching in a previous SL appointment. My 16-chapter co-edited collection entitled 'Justiciability of Human Rights Law in Domestic Jurisdictions' (2016) looked at the rights impacts of austerity measures on such areas as health, housing, and family life in various regions.

Since 2004, I have published in a wide variety of prestigious, peer-reviewed academic journals within the fields of law and the humanities (e.g. Law, Culture and The Humanities, Adoption & Culture, Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, Indigenous Law Bulletin, Steinbeck Review) on issues of familial and social justice. I have contributed invited chapters to academic texts e.g. Lamont's Family Law (OUP, 3rd ed., 2026), and to various edited collections on adoption law related issues (e.g. 'Absented Mothers in Ireland and Elsewhere' in Mullany and O'Reilly eds) The Missing Mother (Demeter Press, 2024), 'Child Abduction Law in the Wake of Brexit' in 'Brexit, Droits et Libertes' (Barbe and Koumpli, Bruylant, 2022).

I am currently working on a third monograph for the Formations series (Ohio State University Press) in conjunction with the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture (ASAC) which focuses upon the rich traditions and histories of folkloric oralities on foundlings' 'rights' (and rights violations) which were the precursors to adoption's current norms, laws, and policies. 

Alongside 3 colleagues from the School of Social Sciences, Education, and Social Work and the Centre for Children's Rights (QUB), I recently completed (as CI) a DOJ/CVOCNI-commissioned project 'Totally Invisible: The experiences of domestic violence and abuse victims/survivors and children engaging with private law family court processes in N Ireland' (2025)   (277 pages), launched at a public roundtable in The Mac, Belfast (Dec, 2025). 

I am the Northern Ireland lead for a UK-wide, 4 Nations steering group (LHUB) which has developed a series of fora aimed at mentoring ECRs with research interests in and across Law & Humanities (June 2026).

I have published and edited SI's within the field of the Humanities, e.g. exploring issues of social justice as they appear in works of fiction. Recent pieces include: 

'Social Justice Tropes in Law and Literature: Rights Narratives, Legal Fictions, (Un)writeable Wrongs' [Special Issue] Liverpool Law Review (2023) (44) (3) 

'The Rationing of essential resources in times of crisis: Logan's Run and the 'science-fictional' right to life' Liverpool Law Review (2023) 44 p 427-446 (with R Pulvirenti)

'The Grapes of Wrath: An artful jurisprudence' (Steinbeck Review) 2021