Dame Hazel Genn is Professor of Socio-Legal Studies in the Faculty of Laws at UCL.  She was Dean of the Faculty 2008-2017 and is currently Director of the UCL Centre for Access to Justice and Co-director of the UCL Judicial Institute.  She previously held a Chair and was Head of the Department of Law at Queen Mary, University of London. Before joining London University, she held full-time research posts at Oxford University Centre for Socio-Legal Studies (1974-1985) and the Cambridge Institute of Criminology (1972-74). In January 2006, she was appointed an Inaugural Commissioner of the new Judicial Appointments Commission established under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 and was a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life 2003-7. In April 2009 she was appointed to the Secretary of State's Advisory Panel on Judicial Diversity. She has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 2000, a member of its Council 2001-2004 and was Chair of Communications and Publications Committee (2008-2011). In 2005, she was awarded the US Law and Society International Prize for distinguished scholarship and she holds Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of  Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Hull, Leicester, Keele, Kingston and York . She worked with the Judicial Studies Board for 12 years, serving as a member of the Main Board and the Tribunals Committee, and contributing to the design and delivery of training for the judiciary at all levels. She served for eight years as Deputy Chair and then Chair of the Economic and Social Research Council's Research Grants Board. In recognition of her work on civil justice, she was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in 2000 and appointed DBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in 2006. In 2006 she was also appointed Queen's Counsel Honoris Causa. In 2008 she was elected Honorary Master of the Bench of Gray's Inn.