Professor Dawn Watkins
School of Law
Professor of Law
Project Lead: Project FORTITUDE
+44 114 222 6827
Full contact details
School of Law
EF01
Bartolomé House
Winter Street
Sheffield
S3 7ND
- Profile
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Dawn joined the School of Law here in Sheffield on 1 January 2022. She was previously a Professor of Law at the University of Leicester, where she had worked since 2005. Dawn is a qualified Solicitor but left legal practice soon after qualifying to pursue a PhD in Law.
Whilst at Leicester she was awarded a Distinguished Teaching Fellowship and short-listed for the National Law Teacher of the Year award. She was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2017.
In 2014-16 Dawn secured a £250,000 grant from the ESRC to explore children’s understanding of law in their everyday lives, using a digital game ‘Adventures with Lex’ created by the research team to gather research data.
This provided the proof of concept for her current project FORTITUDE, funded by a €2 million grant from the ERC, which aims to work with to improve children’s legal capability. The project will provide a range of game-based resources that will improve the lives of children by providing them with opportunities to improve their legal capabilities, as well as providing a framework for the development of these resources in other populations.
In addition to her academic work, Dawn sits as a Fee-Paid Judge of the First Tier Tribunal, assigned to the Health, Education and Social Care Chamber.
- Qualifications
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PhD (Law) University of Leicester
- Research interests
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- Children and the Law
- Gamification of Research Methods
- Law and Narrative
- Publications
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Books
- Research Methods in Law. Routledge.
Edited books
- Introduction..
- Research Methods in Law. Routledge.
Journal articles
- Exploring the role of domestic law in human rights education. Human Rights Education Review, 5(2), 98-116. View this article in WRRO
- Envisioning research through a lens of play. The Journal of Play in Adulthood, 4(1).
- Reimagining the relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach. International Journal of Public Legal Education, 5(1), 4-36.
- Automatic voice emotion recognition of child-parent conversations in natural settings. Behaviour & Information Technology, 40(11), 1072-1089.
- Using narrative and metaphor in formative feedback: Exploring students' responses. Journal of Legal Education, 68(1), 154-175.
- Exploring children's understanding of law in their everyday lives. Legal Studies, 38(1), 59-78.
- Adventures with Lex: The gamification of research?. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 24(3), 229-250.
- Working with law students to develop legal literacy materials. The Law Teacher, 50(2), 195-208.
- Alexander Pope and The Rape of the Lock – Conciliation or Judgment?. Law, Culture and the Humanities, 8(2), 244-265.
- The Role of Narratives in Legal Education. Liverpool Law Review, 32(2), 113-133.
- Podcasting: a lawyer's tale. The Law Teacher, 44(2), 169-180.
- The Influence of the Art for Art's Sake Movement upon English Law, 1780–1959. The Journal of Legal History, 28(2), 233-256.
- Exploring Children’s Understanding of the Legal Rights of Suspects in England and Wales. Youth Justice, 147322542110305-147322542110305.
Chapters
- Interdisciplinary approaches and collaboration in legal education in England and Wales, Key Directions in Legal Education: National and International Perspectives (pp. 35-47).
- Dagenham Car Plant Strike, 1968, Women’s Legal Landmarks: Celebrating the History of Women and Law in the UK and Ireland (pp. 291-296).
- Legal research in the humanities, Research Methods in Law (pp. 86-102).
- Legal research in the humanities, Research Methods in Law (pp. 71-84).
Conference proceedings papers
- A child-centred design evaluation of a learning game to improve children’s legal capability. Proceedings of the 18th European Conference on Games Based Learning, Vol. 18(1) (pp 580-589). Aarhus University, Denmark, 3 October 2024 - 3 October 2024. View this article in WRRO
- Involving Children in the Design of Gamified Law-Related Tests. Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference
- An Experiential Approach to the Design and Evaluation of a Gamified Research Tool for Law in Children's Lives. Proceedings of the The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
- Research Methods in Law. Routledge.
- Research group
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Title/Description: Project FORTITUDE
- Awarding Body: European Research Council
- People Involved: Collaborating with Professor Clare Wood, NTU
- Dates: 1 January 2022 to 31 May 2025
- Amount (EUR): c. 2 million euros
Title/Description: Law in Children's Lives
- Awarding Body: ESRC
- Dates: 2014-2016
- Teaching interests
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- The role of narrative and metaphor in teaching
- Law and story-telling
- Property law
- Children and the law
- Teaching activities
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Module I teach:
Undergraduate
- Property Law
- Children and the Law
- Professional activities and memberships
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Editorial Board of the Law Teacher Journal