Dr Louise Forde
Senior Lecturer in Law

Summary

Louise joined Brunel Law School in September 2020.  Her research interests lie primarily in the areas of youth justice and international children's rights law, and she has conducted extensive research focused on the realisation of children's rights within the context of the justice system.  She is also interested in child participation, and has conducted several research projects which have included children as research advisors and participants.  She is currently conducting research on children's rights under the UNCRC to access and participate in cultural life and the arts.

Louise holds a PhD in Law from University College Cork, awarded in 2018.  During the course of her PhD, she was awarded a Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship from the Irish Research Council, and the President James Slattery Prize in Law from the School of Law in UCC, for her research entitled “’Welfare’ and ‘justice’ in Irish youth justice: A Children’s Rights Analysis of Diverse Approaches to Youth Justice”.  She also holds an LLM (Research), LLM (Criminal Justice), and BCL from the School of Law, UCC, and has completed a Higher Diploma in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.  Between 2018-2020, Louise was a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Children’s Rights and Family Law in the School of Law, UCC, where she also lectured on modules including Child Law, International Human Rights Law and Juvenile Justice.  She was a visiting lecturer in Leiden Law School in 2019. 

Louise's research has been published in journals including Youth Justice: An International Journal, Criminology and Criminal Justice, the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice and the International Journal of Children's Rights.  She is co-author of Children in Conflict with the Law: Rights, Resarch and Progressive Youth Justice, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2023.  She has authored reports for bodies such as Save the Children, the Irish Penal Reform Trust, and other governmental and non-governmental bodies, and contributed to the UN Global Study on Children Deprived of their Liberty.  She was appointed to the editorial board of Youth Justice: An International Journal in 2019.

Qualifications

PhD (University College Cork); Postgraduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (University College Cork); Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (University College Cork); LLM (Research) (University College Cork); LLM (Criminal Justice) (University College Cork); BCL (University College Cork)

Responsibility

Louise teaches Evidence Law, Sentencing & Penology, Criminal Law and Children and the Law in Brunel Law School, and supervises undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations.  She is also Undergraduate Admissions Tutor.