University of London, Birkbeck College

Faculty Member, School of Law

Professor of Law

About

My research looks at the intersection between law and identity, in particular the manner in which particular narratives of identity are adopted and valorized in law by political and judicial elites. My aim in this research is to develop a means by which political and legal structures can be transformed to accommodate different identities and ways of being. This work has involved looking at how a particular construction of Irish identity was embedded in the Irish Constitution of 1937 and the subsequent shift in this notion through gradual social, cultural and political change in my book Constituting Identity: Political Identity Formation and the Constitution in Post-Independence Ireland (Ashgate, 2001). In addition, I have examined how such exclusionary notions of identity construction are at play in relation to bioethical policy both in Ireland, and in my latest book, Conceiving Life: Reproductive Politics and the Law in Contemporary Italy (Ashgate, 2007), in the context of the law and policy in relation to human reproductive technology in Italy.

Contact Information