Dr Jacqueline Kinghan
- Senior Lecturer in Social Change Legal Education (Law)
Biography
Jacqueline Kinghan is a Senior Lecturer in Social Change Legal Education. She has research expertise in access to justice, legal education and social movements. Jacqueline is a qualified barrister (2007 call) with a background broadly in social welfare, equality and human rights law. Her teaching and research explores the legal professional identity and values of social justice lawyers working across these areas.
Jacqueline works closely with charities, law centres and NGOs across the UK in considering how the use of legal tools might alleviate disadvantage and create social change. Her monograph Lawyers, Networks and Progressive Social Change: Lawyers Changing Lives was published by Hart in 2021. As an academic advisor to the Westminster Commission on the Sustainability of Legal Aid, she co-designed the most comprehensive workforce survey of legal aid lawyers conducted to date in England and Wales. The findings will be published by Hart in 2023 in an open access book, Legal Aid and The Future of Access to Justice.
Jacqueline previously held a Senior Lectureship in Law and Social Justice at Newcastle Law School and was the Co-Convenor of the Newcastle Forum for Human Rights and Social Justice. Prior to this, she was the founding Director of the UCL Centre for Access to Justice and established the clinical legal education programme at UCL Faculty of Laws, including a strategic litigation partnership with the charity Just for Kids Law and pro bono projects with local, national and international charities and NGOs. Together with colleagues, she had oversight of the UCL Integrated Legal Advice Clinic (iLAC) in Stratford, East London. The Centre received the UCL Social Enterprise Award in 2015.
Research interests
Jacqueline’s studies the relationship between lawyers and social movements as well as the impact of different legal tools (advice and representation, policy advocacy, strategic litigation). Her work is also concerned with legal education in the UK and the extent to which it prepares students for careers as social justice lawyers.
Jacqueline has expertise in a range of research methodologies including ethnography, participatory action research, focus groups and large-scale surveys. She has published research reports in partnership with civil society organisations using the law and human rights based approaches across the UK. Her work includes scholarship on legal education and she is currently co-writing the first comprehensive student textbook on the theory and practice of clinical legal education (OUP, 2023).
Jacqueline is often consulted to support impact measurement and design monitoring, evaluation and learning frameworks. Together with Professor Lisa Vanhala, UCL Political Science, Jacqueline acts as learning partner to funders, charities and government bodies. They have worked with organisations including the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Children in Need, the Lankelly Chase Foundation, The Baring Foundation, The Legal Education and the Public Law Project. In this capacity, Jacqueline regularly convenes and delivers workshops, expert roundtables and wider learning events across the UK.
Additional information
Jacqueline was awarded a Kennedy scholarship (Harvard Law School, 2005), Queen Mother Scholarship (Middle Temple, 2007) and an AHRC PhD Studentship (Goldsmiths, 2015-2018).
She has previously been appointed as a member of the Access to Justice Committee of the Law Society of Scotland and part-time member of the Scottish Human Rights Commission.