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- Professor of Socio-Legal Studies
- Faculty of Laws
- UCL SLASH
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.
Dame
Hazel is a leading authority on access to civil and administrative
justice. Her prize winning scholarship focuses on the experiences of
ordinary people caught up in legal problems and the responsiveness of the
justice system to the needs of citizens. She has conducted numerous
empirical studies on public access to the justice system and has published
widely in her specialist fields. She is author of Paths to
Justice: What People Do and Think About Going to Law (1999) a seminal
study of public access to justice which has since been replicated in 27
jurisdictions around the globe. In 2008 Dame Hazel delivered the
Hamlyn Lectures on the subject of civil justice. The Lectures were
published by Cambridge University Press in November 2009 entitled Judging
Civil Justice. In 2012 she delivered the F A Mann Annual
Lecture on ‘Why the Privatisation of Justice is a Rule of Law Issue’ and the
Atkin Memorial Lecture on ‘Do it Yourself Justice: Access to Justice and the
Challenge of Self-Representation’. Her work has had a major
influence on policy-makers around the world and she is regularly invited to
lecture and provide advice abroad. Consistent with her interest in
public use of and experiences of the justice system, she has led a Task Force
on Public Legal Education (PLEAS). In 2013 she established the UCL
Faculty of Laws Centre for Access to Justice, and has recently developed its
activities into an innovative partnership with a GP practice in East London to
deliver free legal advice to vulnerable patients within the practice.
Alternative dispute resoluton; civil justice process; Law in the Real World; Empirical Research Methods; judicial studies.
1985 – 1994 | Professor and Head of Law Department | Queen Mary | , United Kingdom |
1974 – 1985 | Senior Research Fellow | Centre for Socio-Legal Studies | Oxford University, United Kingdom |
1972 – 1974 | Research Officer | Institute of Criminology | Cambridge University, United Kingdom |
1993 | Doctor of Laws | University of London |