Maral Nosratzadeh

Profile

I have joined the School of Law since September 2019. I completed my L.L.B in 2022 and my LL.M in Law and social justice here in 2023.

In April 2023 I was awarded the University of Leeds Faculty of Social Sciences Doctoral Scholarship to start my PhD this coming October. During my previous years of study, I was drawn to areas such as disability law, International human rights law, comparative human rights, and international law which heavily impacted my research interests and career path in legal research and academia. I developed further interest in legal research when I was a student researcher to Professor Luke Clements on the Cerebra project, at the University of Leeds, which examined the lawfulness of social care needs assessment procedures for children with autism.

Research interests

My research focuses on examining the effectiveness of advocacy in securing rights to independent living for disabled people in Iceland and England.

It aims to explore how rights to independent living are being accessed, the practical difficulties around securing those rights and the issues that disabled people encounter when trying to enforce their entitlement. In wider context, I explore the extent to which access to advocacy support such as the provision of Rights Protection Officers (in Iceland) and independent advocacy (in England) can be effective. Through this, I hope to be able to model a responsive social care system where the right to advocacy is available irrespective of the type of impairment in securing rights for disabled people.

Outside of the focus of my current research, I am also generally interested in social justice, discrimination, International human rights, disability rights both within legal and wider field. Particularly, the implementation of UN bodies such as United Nation Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability for the enforcement of law and policy.

Qualifications

• LLM Law and social justice (University of Leeds)
• LLB Law (University of Leeds)

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Disability Studies
• Centre for Law and Social Justice
• Centre for Innovation and Research in Legal Education