Professor Jen Hendry

Profile

I am Professor of Law and Social Justice in the School of Law, specialising in law and social theory, socio-legal studies, and comparative legal studies. I am the Director of the Graduate School for the Faculty of Social Sciences, and formerly the Director of the Law School’s Centre for Law and Social Justice (2017-2021).

I am currently an Affiliate Reearcher at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory (mpilhlt, Frankfurt), on the collaborative Research Network Socio-Legal Trajectories in Germany and the UK: Cultures, Actors, and Institutions, and an Academic Associate of 23ES Chambers – see my October 2021 keynote lecture at the launch event for the 23ES Academic Panel. Since 2020 I have also been co-Editor-in-Chief of the German Law Journal (Cambridge University Press; open access; FirstView).

During 2022/23 I was a member of the JUSTICE Working Party on (the function and operation of) Behavioural Control Orders, which published its report ‘Lowering the Standard: A Review of Behavioural Control Orders in England & Wales’ on September 20, 2023. From 2017-19 I served as Vice-Chair of the UK Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA).

I have been a visiting research scholar at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Faculty of Law & Justice’s Centre for Crime, Law, & Justice (2022), the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law's Centre for Comparative & Public Law (2019), the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law (2015), the University of Arizona’s Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy (2013), and the University of Sydney’s Department of Philosophy (2011). 

I joined the School of Law here in Leeds in 2009, prior to which I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Tilburg Institute for Comparative & Transnational Law at Tilburg University. I completed my PhD in Law at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence (2009), having previously studied at the University of Glasgow (LLB Hons, 2002) and the University of Edinburgh (LLM, 2003).

Responsibilities

• Director of the Graduate School, Faculty of Social Sciences

Research interests

My research interests, broadly stated, are in the fields of social and legal theory, socio-legal studies, and comparative legal studies. I am currently writing on theoretical and comparative perspectives on civil/criminal procedural hybrids, specifically civil recovery and knife crime prevention orders, and on questions of legal pluralism and legal culture. I also write on Indigenous justice, preventive justice, and systems theory and autopoiesis.

My Oxford University Press monograph, co-authored with Professor Colin King (Sydney) and entitled Civil Recovery of Criminal Property, was published in August 2023, while my new monograph, co-authored with Dr Alex Green (York) and published with Routledge GlassHouse in July 2024, is entitled Legal Pluralism: New Trajectories in Law.

From October 2019 until December 2022 I was an AHRC Leadership Fellow undertaking research on the project ‘Everyday Challenges to the Rule of Law: The Case of Civil/Criminal Procedural Hybrids’.

• Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory (Affiliate Scholar)
• 23ES Chambers (Academic Affiliate)
• German Law Journal (co-EiC)
• Manifesto Club (Advisory Council)
• Socio-Legal Studies Association
• Leeds Social Science Institute 
• SSRN

• Economic and Social Constitutionalism
• Everyday Challenges to the Rule of Law: The Case of Civil/Criminal Procedural Hybrids
• Governance and Legitimacy in the EU
• Socio-legal Trajectories in Germany and the UK: Cultures, Actors and Institutions
• Spaces of Indigenous Justice

Qualifications

• PhD, European University Institute
• MRes, European University Institute
• LLM, University of Edinburgh
• LLB (Hons), University of Glasgow

Professional memberships

• Manifesto Club, Advisory Council
• German Law Journal, Editor-in-Chief
• 23ES Chambers, Academic Panel
• Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory
• Peer Review College, Arts & Humanities Research Council, UKRI
• Peer Review College, Economic & Social Research Council, UKRI
• Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA)

Student education

Due to my Faculty role I am not currently engaged in delivering UG or PGT student education, only undergraduate dissertation supervision.

I supervise doctoral research in the fields of law and social theory, socio-legal studies, and comparative legal studies. I am particularly interested in supervising work taking theoretical perspectives on civil/criminal hybrid procedures, and other behavioural control orders. I am similarly interested in supervising research on issues of Indigenous justice, legal pluralism, and legal culture. 

I currently supervise three postgraduate researchers (PGRs) and have successfully supervised these six excellent doctoral researchers to completion of their thesis:

• Dr Moa Näsström
• Dr George Wilson
• Dr Michael Randall
• Dr Louisa Ashley
• Dr Rosie Fox
• Dr James Greenwood-Reeves

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Law and Social Justice

Current postgraduate researchers

• Jiaqi Zhang
• Emma Patchett