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Staff Profile

Professor Kathryn Hollingsworth

Professor of Law

  • Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 7613
  • Address: Newcastle Law School
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
    UK
Background

Professor Kathryn Hollingsworth is a graduate of the University of Sheffield (BA (Hons), Tolley Publishing Prize for the highest law degree) and the University of Cambridge (PhD) (AHRC scholar). She previously held full-time academic positions at King's College London, the University of Otago (New Zealand) and the University of Cardiff, and has held visiting positions at the Universities of Melbourne and New South Wales in Australia, Otago University in New Zealand, and Texas Tech University in the USA.


Kathryn's research focuses on youth justice and children's rights. She is particularly interested in the theorisation of children's rights, as well as their realisation in practice across the criminal justice system. Additionally, she researches and writes about judicial approaches to children's rights. She has published widely in these areas, and has acted in an advisory capacity to a range of children's rights organisations and judicial training bodies. 


Within Newcastle University, Kathryn is the co-convenor with Nikki Godden-Rasul of the Inspirational Women of the Law project, which includes a portrait exhibition and the biennial Inspirational Women of the Law event. Kathryn was the chair of the University's NU Women network from 2016-2019 and in 2018 she was joint winner of the Vice-Chancellor's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion 'Outstanding staff' Award.


Until early 2024 Kathryn was Director of Research and Deputy Head of School within Newcastle Law School. She is the convenor of the Judges, Lawyering and Justice research grouping and a member of the Children and Youth NuCore.


Most recently, Kathryn has taught constitutional law, administrative law, criminal law, family law, and law and social justice, and welcomes PGR students with an interest in children's rights, youth justice, and judging.


Research

Research Interests

Kathryn researches in the area of youth justice and children's rights, and her current focus in on sentencing children and their access to justice in court. She is also more broadly interested in judicial approaches to children's rights. She was the co-director (with Professor Helen Stalford of Liverpool University) of the AHRC-funded Children's Rights Judgment Project (www.CRjudgment.uk), which began life as a collaboration of 62 scholars from across the globe. As part of this project she was co-editor with Helen Stalford and Stephen Gilmore (KCL) of Rewriting Children's Rights Judgments: From Academic Vision to New Practice which was launched by Lady Hale at the Supreme Court in 2017. Following the publication of the book, Kathryn and Helen have explored further the functions and justifications of judgments written specifically for children and their article on this topic ('This is a case about you and your future" Towards Judgments for Children' (2020) 83(5) Modern Law Review 1030-1058) won the Socio-Legal Studies Association 2021 article prize (you can see an interview with Kathryn and Helen about this research, conducted by Simon Flacks of the SLSA, here). The children's rights judgments project also influenced the introduction in New Zealand of regulations written specifically for children, and has been the focus of judicial training and the development of training materials for judges in multiple jurisdictions. 


In her youth justice research, Kathryn is particularly interested in the theorisation and conceptualisation of children's rights in criminal justice, and how children's rights are realised in practice across the youth justice system. She has published widely in this area. She is currently working on a project examining children's rights and sentencing remarks, bringing together the two strands of her research. Her work on sentencing remarks for children has formed the basis of judicial training for Crown Court judges in England and Wales and youth court judges in New Zealand, as well as new guidance for Crown Court judges on communicating sentences to children (endorsed by the Court of Appeal in ZA v R [2023]). In recognition of the impact of her work outside of the academy, she was shortlisted for Newcastle University's Engagement and Place Awards (Policy and Practice) 2023 (joint runner up).


Kathryn is involved in a range of advisory activities relating to her work in youth justice and children's rights. She is on the steering group for the Youth Justice Legal Centre (http://www.yjlc.uk/), the steering group of the Academic Advisory Network to the Youth Justice Board, a director and chair of the Child Rights and Youth Justice CIC, a member of the Alliance for Youth Justice; and in 2015 she was academic advisor and author of the youth justice and civil liberties section (England) of the NGO alternative report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (co-ordinated by the Children's Rights Alliance for England). She was also a trustee for Just for Kids Law between 2016-2019. 


Prior to her work in children's rights and criminal justice, Kathryn published more generally in the area of constitutional and administrative law, in particular on the constitutional role of public sector audit and she is the co-author (with Fidelma White) of the leading book in this area, Audit, Accountability and Government (Oxford; Cavendish/OUP; 1999).  She has also written on other public sector ombudsman and was the recipient of research grants from the Canadian High Commission and the Nuffield Foundation which supported this research. 


Postgraduate Supervision

Kathryn welcomes enquiries about postgraduate supervision in the areas of youth justice, sentencing, children's rights, and judging.

 

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

Public Law

Criminal Law

Family Law 

Publications