Professor Lydia Bleasdale

Profile

I have been teaching at the School of Law (primarily in the areas of criminal law and criminal justice), since 2005. I am a graduate of the LLB Law programme at the University of Leeds (2003), and of the University of Oxford’s MSC Criminology and Criminal Justice programme (2004).

I have a vast amount of experience in leadership in areas related to the student experience, and enjoy bringing my research in student wellbeing and belonging into my teaching practice. 

I am an experienced reviewer of other Law Schools, including on Strategic Review Panels, as well as being an External Examiner on Undergradute and Postgraduate programmes within the UK and internationally.

I am available to undertake consultancy work relating to student education and the student experience more generally. 

When I am not at work, I enjoy spending time with my husband, three children (age 13, 5 and 2) and boisterous border collie. I have held a season ticket for longer than is sensible at Everton’s Goodison Park, but don’t get to visit as much as I used to because of family commitments. In recent years, this has felt like a blessing.

Responsibilities

• Director of Community and Belonging
• Co-Director, Centre for Innovation and Research in Legal Education
• Acting Director of Employability (September - December 2024)

Research interests

My primary research interests are student wellbeing and belonging. In 2021 I was promoted to Professor along the Student Education pathway: I am always keen to support colleagues at Leeds and elsewhere who are considering (or already on) the same career pathway.

I co-convene two international networks – Connecting Legal Education, and Advancing Wellness in Law – and recently edited a text concerning student support within Law Schools (‘How to Offer Effective Wellbeing Support to Law Students’, Edward Elgar, 2024). I have written extensively about student resilience, belonging and identity and recently conducted a research project which examined the career experiences of those on student education-focused contracts within Higher Education through the prism of a leading theory of wellbeing (self-determination theory). I am currently co-editing a Special Issue for the Law Teacher Journal, focused upon Law School communities, and in 2025 I will be introducing a compulsory Undergraduate LLB module which focuses primarily (although not exclusively) upon wellbeing, identity, belonging and leadership. 

I am one of two Deputy Editors for the Law Teacher journal. 

In 2016-17 I was awarded (alongside former colleague Sarah Humphreys) a year-long fellowship to the Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence (LITE), examining undergraduate student resilience across six different disciplines at the University of Leeds. The findings resulted in a revised template for academic personal tutoring within the University of Leeds and influenced future LITE projects, as well as practice at other institutions. Following on from the project, I was invited to be a member of numerous University and LUU strategy groups and to be a member of the LITE Board. 

In April 2017 my paper ‘‘Contextualising Resilience Amongst Law Students,’ which drew upon the LITE research, was awarded the Stan Marsh Best Paper prize at the Association of Law Teachers Conference.

Qualifications

• LLB Law
• MSc Criminology and Criminal Justice

Professional memberships

• Association of Law Teachers
• Society of Legal Scholars
• Socio-Legal Studies Association

Student education

I primarily teach criminal law, including supervision of postgraduate and undergraduate dissertations in that area. 

In addition to my teaching and research commitments, I am the School’s Community and Belonging Director (responsible for developing, implementing and overseeing our strategy to further develop our community of undergraduate and taught postgraduate students); I co-direct the School’s Centre for Innovation and Research in Legal Education (including having responsibility for external-facing research events); and I will be the Acting Director of Employability until December 2024 (covering for a colleague’s esearch leave) 

I was the School of Law’s Director of Community Engagement (Pro Bono) for 11 years until 2021. I oversaw a range of opportunities through which the School engages with the local communities in and around Leeds, including the award-winning Welfare Rights project; a scheme assisting litigants in person; and public legal education projects (StreetLaw). All these projects provide students with the opportunity to work with clients, community partners and/or lawyers, at the same time as developing skills of use within a wide range of careers. 

In 2018 I won the national Oxford University Press Law Teacher of the Year Award and between 2019-21 I was a judge of the Award. 

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Innovation and Research in Legal Education