Lecturer & School Director of Academic Tutoring, Amanda Millmore has been awarded a University Teaching Fellowship for 2019.

The Fellowship is a prestigious and competitive award for staff who demonstrate individual excellence and dedication to the development of teaching and learning within the University and beyond. It also aims to support staff to further develop in the area of teaching and learning.

The Panel welcomed Amanda’s clear commitment to providing high quality learning experiences for students, informed by her legal practice experience, and to being an active part of the T&L community at Reading and across the sector. The Panel recognised Amanda’s impact on student learning and the student experience, particularly in respect of employability, student support and working in partnership with students.

Amanda said “As a teaching intensive academic, I was really honoured to be awarded a University Teaching Fellowship this year. I love teaching and working with students, and it is heartening to see the University’s commitment and support for excellence in teaching put into practice with the fellowship scheme.  I am looking forward to joining the vibrant UTF community of like-minded teaching-focused colleagues who champion and share best practice in teaching, to help me to develop my teaching further.”

Two final year law students scooped the prize for the best performance in the Family Law exam sponsored by the  Reading branch of Stowe Family Law.

Shama Ali and Alice Hanney both achieved first-class honours in the module with the top marks out of the year. At a ceremony at Foxhill House on graduation day, Naheed Taj, Managing Partner at Stowe Family Law, Reading, presented the jointwinners with their prize.

Dr Thérèse Callus, Module convenor for Family Law said:

“We are very proud with the outstanding performance of our prize winners whose hard work and commitment clearly showed in their results. We had a high standard across the year and all of our family law students can be proud of their achievements. We are delighted that Shama and Alice will benefit from work experience kindly provided by Stowe Family Law. Our collaboration with local firms is very important and enables our students to combine academic study with practical insight. We are very grateful for the support that Naheed Taj and her team provide.”

Accepting her prize, Alice Hanney said:

“I found family law the most enjoyable part of my degree. Thanks to Stowe Family Law for sponsoring the prize: I am excited to work with them.”

Shama Ali confirmed the added benefit of Stowe’s input: “Stowe’s support has been appreciated because it allows students to see the practical side of the law.”

Naheed Taj, Managing Partner at Stowe Family Law, Reading said:

“At Stowe we are passionate about training young people and giving them guidance and insight into life as a family lawyer. This guidance can be critical in helping them to understand whether family law is right for them and if so, allowing them to build confidence to be leaders in this field later in their career.”

Professor Therese Callus gave a television interview on France 24 about the laws around the right to die following the Vincent Lambert case in France.

The case of Vincent Lambert, a victim of a motorcycle accident over ten years ago and who has been in a vegetative state ever since, has raised serious questions relating to the value of life, the meaning of death, and medical decision-making at the threshold of the two. Given that France has adopted End-of-Life laws which allows for the withdrawal of treatment in certain circumstances, it was ultimately the question of the role of different family members in the decision-making process, and the existence of conflict between them, that has thrust this case to the fore of media attention. The case was prolonged due to the disagreement between Vincent’s family: his wife and children agreed with the doctors’ decision to withdraw treatment and relied upon what they claimed to have been Vincent’s own wishes on the subject, in accordance with French law. His parents and siblings on the other hand refuted that Vincent would have wanted to stop treatment and claimed that French law violated his fundamental rights and discriminated against him on the basis of his disability. After exhausting all national courts and their case being rejected by the European Court of Human Rights, the parents had sought the intervention of the United Nations Committee on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. However, the French Supreme Court held at the end of June that any investigation which the Committee could carry out did not prevent the State hospital authorities from giving effect to the declaration by the national administrative court that the withdrawal of treatment was lawful.

Besides complex jurisdictional issues as to which courts should deal with this issue, this case highlights the difficulty in making medical treatment decisions for patients who are unable to communicate what their wishes would be. What role do family members play and what role should they play in identifying what the patient would want?

Professor Therese works predominantly in the areas of family and biomedical law. As the UK Representative in the International Academic Network on Bioethics, she has co-edited a number of comparative law collections in biomedical law and ethics.

Amanda Millmore(L) & Jess Davies

Following on from the success of Part 2 students presenting at the SEDA Conference in Belfast in May, another Part 2 student, Jess Davies, attended the national Advance HE Teaching & Learning Conference on 4th July 2019 in Newcastle. Jess co-presented a session about the staff-student partnership assessment design project that she had been involved in, together with Amanda Millmore from the School of Law, and fielded audience questions. Jess was able to network at the conference with academics and policy advisers and now has opportunities to enhance her CV further as a result, improving her own employability skills.

Jess had been part of a core group of 5 students working with Amanda Millmore and Dr. Annika Newnham (academics from the School of Law) this year to design assessments for a new module, which embed employability skills. These students ran focus groups with other law students, and collaborated in the design of the assessments, and the new module “Children, Families and the State” is starting in September 2019 for Final Year students with the student-designed employability skills-focused assessments. The module is already oversubscribed!

Professor Rosa Freedman, at the School of Law, has been recognised by the University’s Research and Engagement Impact Awards for her work in safeguarding children from sexual exploitation and abuse in conflict and crisis zones. Developing robust guidelines alongside the specialist organisation Keeping Children Safe, Dr Freedman’s work has shaped the way peacekeeping forces are recruited and trained and help ensure international standards for child safeguarding are applied worldwide.

Twelve outstanding projects were shortlisted this year and from these four winners were announced on 25 June 2019.

Professor Christopher Newdick at the School of Law also made the shortlist for his research work on Priority Setting in the NHS.

For more information on the awards, click here.

Read about Professor Rosa’s project here.

Congratulations to our finalist Charmaine Chong!  First 100 years have recently published an article highlighting her fabulous designs which have been used by the School of Law to mark their centenary celebrations for 100 Years of Women in Law.

Read the article here.

On May 17, 2019, Dr Andrea Miglionico attended the LLM Fair at The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS). He met the Dean of the Law Faculty and the Vice-President of the European Commission and presented the wide offering of the School’s programmes to the University’s students.

Year two students Megan Bennett and Tom Fuller presented at the SEDA Conference in Belfast (Staff & Educational Development Association) on 9th May 2019. They had been awarded a student bursary by SEDA to present our collaborative project, and they also took part in a panel answering questions from the audience. Megan and Tom , had been part of a core group of five students working with Amanda Millmore and Dr. Annika Newnham (academics from the School of Law) to design assessments for a new module, which embed employability skills. The five students in the core group were Megan and Tom, plus Jess Davies, Teresa Chew & Krissy Hiu. These students ran focus groups with other second year law students, and collaborated in the design of the assessments, and the new module Children, Families and the State is going to be running for their year group as a Final Year optional module in September 2019 with the employability skills focused assessments. The project was awarded money under the PLanT projects scheme in 2018/19.