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Professor, Cardiff Law School, Cardiff University

Gillian Douglas is Professor of Law at the Cardiff Law School, UK. She obtained her LLB at Manchester University and her LLM at London University (the London School of Economics) and was awarded the degree of LLD (Doctor of Laws) by Cardiff University in 2011. She previously taught at the University of Bristol and was a Visiting Teaching Fellow at the National University of Singapore. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She sat on the AHRC's Block Grant Panel in 2009 and is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College Strategic Reviewers Group. She is a former member of the Research Awards Advisory Committee of the Leverhulme Trust. She is also Chair of the Law Sub-Panel for the next research assessment exercise, REF 2014. She was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2012 and appointed to the Welsh Advisory Committee of the Law Commission in 2013.

Her main research interest is family law, on which she has written extensively. She is the joint case comments editor of the journal Family Law and co-editor of the Child and Family Law Quarterly. She is the author of An Introduction to Family Law (2001: Oxford University Press, 2nd edition 2004), co-author (with Nigel Lowe) of Bromley's Family Law (9th ed. 1998, 10th ed, 2006: Oxford UP), (with Chris Barton) of Law and Parenthood (1995: Butterworths Law in Context series) and (with Edward Jacobs) of Child Support: The Legislation (1st ed 1993, 2nd ed 1995, 3rd ed 1997: Sweet & Maxwell). Her interest in family law overlaps into the field of medical law, and she is the author of Law, Fertility and Reproduction (1991: Sweet & Maxwell). She carried out the first empirical study (funded by the Nuffield Foundation) into access to fertility treatment under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's Code of Practice (1992).

With colleagues from the disciplines of law, psychology and social sciences, she has been involved in a number of empirical research studies into aspects of family life and the law including: with M Murch, et al, Safeguarding Children's Welfare in Uncontentious Divorce, Lord Chancellor's Department (LCD Research Series 7/99:1999); with A Perry et al, How Parents Cope Financially on Marriage Breakdown, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (Family Policy Studies Centre and Joseph Rowntree Foundation: 2000); with I Butler et al, Children's Perspectives and Experience of the Divorce Process, 1997-2000, ESRC (published as Divorcing Children (Jessica Kingsley Publishing, 2003); with N Ferguson et al, Grandparenting in Divorced Families, 2000-2002, the Nuffield Foundation (Policy Press, 2004); with R Moorhead and M Sefton, The Advice Needs of Lone Parents, 2003-4, the Nuffield Foundation (published by One Parent Families, 2004); with M Murch, L Scanlan and C Miles, Research into the Operation of Rule 9.5 of the Family Proceedings Rules 1991 Final Report 2004-6, Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA, 2006); with J Pearce (University of Bristol) and H Woodward, Property Disputes on Cohabitation Breakdown, ESRC (published as A Failure of Trust, Resolving Property Disputes on Cohabitation Breakdown, www.law.cf.ac.uk/researchpapers/papers/1.pdf); with A Humphrey, G Morrell, L Mills of the National Centre for Social Research, and H Woodward, Inheritance and the family: attitudes to will-making and intestacy, Nuffield Foundation, http://www.natcen.ac.uk/study/inheritance-and-the-family; with Julie Doughty, Reasons for delay in public child care cases in the courts, for the South East Wales Local Family Justice Council; and with Doe, Gilliat-Ray and Sandberg, Social Cohesion and Civil Law: The Family and Religious Courts, funded by the AHRC as part of the AHRC/ESRC Society and Religion Programme, on the role and operation of three religious courts (Roman Catholic, Islamic and Jewish).

She is a founder member of the Network on Family, Regulation and Society, a research collaboration between family socio-legal researchers from the Universities of Exeter, Bath, Bristol and Cardiff: http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/law/research/frs/.

Experience

  • –present
    Professor, Cardiff Law School, Cardiff University