Sabbatical Fellow awarded funding from the Socio-Legal Studies Association
Dr Eithne Dowds
Mitchell Institute Sabbatical Fellow, Dr Eithne Dowds, in collaboration with Dr Elizabeth Agnew (Queen’s University Belfast), Dr Susan Leahy (University of Limerick), and Dr Siobhan Weare (Lancaster University), has been awarded funding from the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) Seminar Competition to host a two day (19 and 20 June 2025) Conference at Queen's University Belfast on 'Reforming Legal and Policy Responses to Investigating and Prosecuting Sexual Violence'.
Confirmed speakers/facilitators for the Conference include:
- Professor Julia Quilter (University of Wollongong, Australia)
- Professor Clare McGlynn (Durham University)
- Professor Vanessa Munro (University of Warwick)
- Professor Penney Lewis (Law Commissioner for Criminal Law England and Wales)
- Dr Dominic Willmott (University of Loughborough)
More information on the Conference will be released in due course.
Dr Eithne Dowds
Dr Dowds is a Senior Lecturer in the Law School at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research focuses on the legal construction of the crime of rape, with a particular focus on formulations of sexual consent, in international and domestic criminal law. Her monograph, Feminist Engagement with International Criminal Law (Hart 2019) explored the relationship between consent and coercion as elements of the crime of rape. More recently, her work has focused on the trend towards the adoption of affirmative notions of consent, as well as legal framings of the accused’s mindset in respect of consent.