Menu Close
Senior Lecturer, School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University

I research and teach in the fields of human rights and criminal justice, with a particular focus on the death penalty. My latest book, 'Slavery and the Death Penalty: A Study in Abolition', was published by Routledge in 2018. I have also published articles in leading national and international journals, including Public Law, Criminal Law Review, European Human Rights Law Review, and International & Comparative Law Quarterly.

I also have a keen interest in clinical legal education, which involves (a) providing legal assistance to those in need, and (b) enhancing students' learning experience by enabling them to put their academic studies into practice. To this extent, I work with various pro bono projects in the School of Law and Politics in Cardiff, including the Innocence Project. In 2008, I founded Birmingham Law School's Pro Bono Group, whcih I led until I left Birmingham Law School in 2017. The Group was awarded the prize for Best Contribution by a Law School in the LawWorks & Attorney General Student Awards 2017.

My research has led to engagements with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the issue of foreign nationals, including migrant workers, who face the death penalty abroad; the Australian Parliament on the issue of Australia's role in promoting abolition of capital punishment worldwide; and the charity Amicus, which provides assistance to attorneys in America defending people facing execution. An article of mine on the place of human rights treaties in the English legal system was referred to extensively by Lord Kerr in the UK Supreme Court in R (SG) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2015] UKSC 16

Prior to joining academia I was a legal researcher at the American Bar Association Juvenile Justice Center from 2002 - 2004, where I assisted with a nationwide effort to abolish the death penalty for offenders under the age of 18. I helped lawyers representing death-eligible juveniles, and I co-authored an Amicus Curiae Brief on the role of international human rights law in interpreting the Eighth Amendment, which was cited with approval by the US Supreme Court in Roper v Simmons 543 US 551 (2005), in which the Court outlawed the juvenile death penalty.

Experience

  • 2008–present
    Lecturer, Birmingham Law School
  • 2017–present
    Senior lecturer, School of Law and Politics, Cardiff