Assistant Professor in Law and Safeguarding

The Law School at Durham University seeks to appoint a talented individual to the role of Assistant Professor in Law and Safeguarding. We welcome applications from those with research interests in child protection law, family law, or human rights law with a particular focus on children’s rights. The post holder must be able to teach at undergraduate level on one of the Law School’s core law modules. For more information, please visit our School pages at Durham Law School - Durham University.

This post offers an exciting opportunity to make a major contribution to the development of internationally excellent research and teaching while allowing you unrivalled opportunities to progress and embed your career in an exciting and progressive institution. The Law School provides a supportive environment for its community of academics, which comprises a generous sabbatical policy and an infrastructure of high-profile research centres that bring together colleagues for collaborative projects. One of our newest centres is the Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding, to which this post is being recruited.

The successful candidate will be on our Education and Research academic pathway. The role is substantially funded by an award from the Strategic Research Fund at Durham University establishing the Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding. The role will be focused on the objectives of the GCCS for the four-year SRF award period, with minimal teaching and citizenship duties during that time. The split between research, teaching and citizenship is subject to change over the course of the SRF award period, depending on progress against the funding objectives.

The Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding

In September 2025 Durham University will launch the Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding (GCCS). The GCCS, led by Durham’s Sociology Department, Business School and School of Education, will bring together departments (including the Law School) across the four faculties of the University to: transform how societies understand and deliver services that safeguard young people beyond their homes; create systems that look beyond the capacity of parents to protect children; and build sustainable partnerships in which safeguarding is truly everybody's business. This is not a Centre simply focused on researching and improving existing safeguarding practices; it is instead committed to a radical transformation in how safeguarding is conceptualised, studied, and practiced, and by whom. The Centre will achieve this by building a critical interdisciplinary effort to cement an emergent field of research. It will implement that research in collaboration with others to reform policy and legal frameworks, and the organisational practices, that govern the provision and evaluation of services around the world. It will scale that implementation through commercial partnerships with industries beyond traditional safeguarding partnerships; providing various routes to learn about Contextual Safeguarding that transcends sector boundaries.

Short-listed candidates will be invited to the University, either virtually or in-person and will have the opportunity to meet key members of the Department. The assessment for the post will normally include a presentation to staff and students in the Department followed by an interview and we anticipate that the assessments and interviews will take place over two days in or around June 2025.

Advert information