School of Law

Fiona Cownie studied English Language and Literature at Bristol University, graduating with 2.1 honours, after which she trained to be a primary school teacher at the College of Ripon and York St John, gaining a Merit in her teaching diploma. She taught in Nottinghamshire for three years before leaving to read Law at Leicester University. She graduated with First Class Honours and gained a scholarship to read for an LL.M. at the LSE. After graduating from the LSE, she trained as a barrister and was called to Lincoln’s Inn. She did 18 months’ pupillage, 12 months in Chancery chambers (11 Old Square and 12 New Square) and 6 months at Brick Court Chambers, one of the leading commercial sets in London. In 1987  Fiona Cownie was appointed to a lectureship at Leicester University. She was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1997 and left in 2003 to take up the Hugh Bevan Chair of Law at the University of Hull. She was appointed to a Chair in Law at Keele in 2006.

Fiona Cownie’s research interests centre on legal education and the legal system. Her work covers all areas of legal education. It includes analysis of the ways in which law is taught, especially arguments about the importance of educational theory and philosophy to legal education. It also includes work on the purpose of the law school and on relationships between the academic study of law and vocational training as required by the legal professions. Professor Cownie has also made a major contribution to debates about the academic staff who work in law schools; she has carried out extensive empirical research in this area, both in the U.K. and in Canada, and has written a monograph and a series of articles exploring different aspects of legal academic life.

Professor Cownie is the co-author of one of the leading textbooks on the English legal system. Her interest in this area led her to carry out an extended anthroplogical study of dispute resolution among Quakers, which was published as a monograph. She has also carried out empirical research relating to victims of crime for the Ministry of Justice.

Professor Cownie is happy to supervise postgraduate research in the areas of legal education, the legal profession and civil justice, including alternative dispute resolution.

Undergraduate Teaching

Legal Skills
Legal System

Postgraduate Teaching:

Introduction to Socio-Legal Research

Postgraduate Skills Workshops in:

Medical Ethics and Law

Child Care Law and Practice 

Professor Cownie is willing to supervise undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations relating to aspects of the civil justice system, including alternative dispute resolution and the legal profession, as well as any aspect of legal education.

Fiona Cownie is currently a member of the Judicial Studies Board Advisory Council, and of the Advisory Board of the UK Centre for Legal Education. She holds a Senior Research Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London and is a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College. She is a member of the Council of the Academy of Social Sciences, and is Convenor of the Legal Education Research Group, which is part of the International Sociology Association’s  Research Committee on the Sociology of Law Working Group on the Legal Professions.

Professor Cownie is also a Past President of the Society of Legal Scholars, which is the largest and longest-established association of academic lawyers in the U.K. She is also a Past President of the European Law Faculties Association, and a Past Vice-Chair of the Socio-Legal Studies Association.