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Rachael O'Connor

Rachael O'Connor

  • Position: Associate Professor (Teaching and Scholarship)
  • Areas of expertise: Reverse mentoring; Class; Under-represented identities; Legal and higher education; Legal profession; Academic personal tutoring; Student support and wellbeing; Tax; Employment
  • Email: R.E.OConnor@leeds.ac.uk
  • Phone: +44(0)113 343 1569
  • Location: 2.41 Liberty Building
  • Website: Twitter | LinkedIn

Profile

I am an Associate Professor in Legal Education, University Academic Lead for Personal Tutoring, Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence Fellow and Michael Beverley Innovation Fellow. I am also a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Now a non-practising solicitor (formerly a corporate lawyer in an international law firm), I am also a trustee of legal mental health and wellbeing charity, LawCare. I am a graduate of the LLB Law and Accounting programme at the University of Leeds and the University of Law's Legal Practice Course (PGDip) programme. I come from a working-class background and was first generation in my family to attend university. This contributes towards my passion for improving experiences and opportunities (now and in the future) for under-represented students and amplifying collective voices of under-representation as a teacher, personal tutor and researcher. I have led and continue to lead a number of reverse mentoring initiatives at the University of Leeds which has seen students from a range of under-represented backgrounds, across disciplines, developing their lived experience expertise, mentoring teaching staff, student support staff, personal tutoring leads, campus police liaison officers, senior executives/leaders and legal professionals. 

As part of an institutional level role in collaboration with colleagues in Educational Engagement, I deliver a university-level reverse mentoring scheme partnering under-represented students with university leaders, now embedded into core student success work. Hundreds of staff, students and external partners have benefitted in diverse ways from participating in these projects.

My other institutional role as University Lead for Academic Personal Tutoring involves a range of leadership responsibilities, including oversight for the provision and development of personal tutoring across the whole university. Working collaboratively with student and graduate interns and the university’s Learning Design Team, I am currently leading an institutional-level review and design consultation on academic personal tutoring. I also develop and deliver staff training on personal tutoring, with colleagues in our OD&PL team.

My other main area of research and interest is social class. I am a founding member of the University of Leeds’ Staff Working-Class Network (for academic and professional services’ colleagues) and part of the organising committee. I am currently co-authoring a book specifically on supporting working-class students in HE and supporting colleagues to develop a class-conscious practice.

Staff-student partnership is fundamental to my work. I have collaborated with many student research assistants, advisory boards, interns and consultation teams who identify as under-represented at university across my research who have gone on to win their own awards from HE bodies, begin funded PhDs, receive job offers and take on further research and experience opportunities, utilising their reverse mentoring experiences to continue on their own success journeys.

Within the School of Law, I am an active member of the Centre for Innovation and Research in Legal Education and the Legal Professions Working Group. I have previously held the roles of Director of Student Support and Academic Personal Tutor Lead for three years before moving on to my current institutional level roles. During the covid-19 pandemic, I led our School’s Transitions workstream, developing our practice to support returning students in the transition to online learning and teaching. I was also an active member of the Community and Wellbeing workstream, working with colleagues to deliver wellbeing workshops for students and other events. I also managed and worked collaboratively with a group of undergraduate students who have been responsible for amplifying the student voice and collecting student feedback during the pandemic (Community Architects). This led to me designing and recruiting for a new suite of student roles in the School (Student Welcome, Induction and Transitions Assistants) who I collaborated with to redesign the welcome and induction experience in the School of Law. I was also Acting Director of Community Engagement in 2019 and Community Engagement Manager from December 2019-July 2020. During this time, I worked closely with our Community Engagement Activities Co-Ordinator and the Educational Engagement team to develop our community engagement projects in the School of Law, enhancing student numbers and bringing in new external partners from the legal profession, focusing in particular on development of our StreetLaw and PrisonLaw projects. I also worked collaboratively with colleagues to move many of our community engagement projects online, in light of the covid-19 pandemic. 

When I'm not in the School, I enjoy spending time with my family, particularly my dog, Rudy. I love training at my crossfit gym and practicing yoga. I also regularly rehearse and perform with local musical theatre groups.

Responsibilities

  • University Lead for Academic Personal Tutoring
  • Academic Lead for Reverse Mentoring

Research interests

My research focuses on developing authentic relationships between students and staff through reverse mentoring, within higher education (HE) and beyond, including the legal profession. I have won prizes internally and externally for this work, including a University of Leeds’ Early Career Excellence Teaching Award, a Faculty Partnership Award for Equality and Inclusion, the Association of Law Teachers’ Stan Marsh Prize, the Law Teacher’s Annual Seminar Prize, a Kindness in Education Award and a University of Leeds’ Sustained Excellence Teaching Award. I have published widely on reverse mentoring in international, peer reviewed legal and HE journals, as well as delivering a TedX talk on reverse mentoring and regularly advising external partners on reverse mentoring. I recently concluded a three-year fellowship project with the Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence which explored the intersections of reverse mentoring and academic personal tutoring. The project was co-designed with with a research team of students from across campus who self-identify as under-represented at University and findings from the project are influencing the development of academic personal tutoring at an institutional level. I am also currently working in partnership with legal mental health and wellbeing charity LawCare on a reverse mentoring project involving aspiring, junior and senior lawyers in the legal profession, focusing on the intersections of inclusion and wellbeing for aspiring and junior lawyers from under-represented backgrounds. We are developing a reverse mentoring toolkit for the legal profession, stemming from the project’s findings and this work stemmed from my Michael Beverley Innovation Fellowship.

Alongside academic publications, I regularly present my work on my reverse mentoring work at national and international conferences and network events, as well as writing blogs and advising external organisations and other HE institutions on reverse mentoring. 

My publications/websites are noted below:

<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>

Qualifications

  • LLB Law and Accounting
  • PGDip Legal Practice Course
  • PGCert Academic Practice

Professional memberships

  • The Law Society
  • Solicitors Regulation Authority
  • Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy

Student education

My role is focused around student education and support in terms of both teaching and research interests.

As an Associate Professor in the School, at undergraduate level, I teach across Employment Law, The Law of Trusts and a cross-faculty module on COVID19 and the Social Sciences where my unit is titled ‘Taxation, Class and Climate Change’. I have previously taught Land Law and Company Law. At postgraduate level, I have also previously taught International Tax Law and Policy.

I supervise dissertations at undergraduate and postgraduate level, on a range of topics although typically in the areas of Tax, Employment and the Legal Profession. I am academic personal tutor to a number of tutees (typically 35 per year) across all undergraduate year groups, with a specific focus on tutoring students who are part of the university’s Plus Programme.

Research groups and institutes

  • Centre for Business Law and Practice
  • Centre for Innovation and Research in Legal Education