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School of Law

Dr Ruth Fletcher

Title: Senior Lecturer in Law
Phone: +44(0)1782 734361
Email:
Location: Chancellor's Building, room CBC 1.029
Role: PGR Co-ordinator Study Abroad Co-ordinator
CLES Committee Member
Contacting me: During office hours, or by email.

Ruth studied for an LLB at Trinity College Dublin and an MA in Women’s Studies at University College Cork. She lived in Toronto for 5 years while doing an LLM and a DJur at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, before joining Keele in 1999.

At Keele, Ruth co-ordinated an international research network (Leverhulme 2000-3) in Gender, Sexuality and Law with the Centre for Feminist Legal Research, Delhi and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, Leeds.In 2004-9, she was Associate Director for the AHRC Research Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality, and Co-ordinator of the Centre’s research cluster in healthcare law and bioethics 2004-7.

Research interests:

  • Gender, sexuality and law, particularly reproduction
  • Health law
  • Feminist and critical socio-legal theory
  • Human rights and equality
  • Governance and civil society

Current major projects:

Reproductive Life: Governing Abortion in Transnational Times (Ashgate, due 2011).  This book project draws on critical approaches to transnational governance to analyse abortion tourism and its significance for key concepts of reproductive regulation

Past major projects:

Constituting Markets and Transnational Social Networks: Support for Irish Clients of British Abortion Services since 1992 (ESRC small grants 2004-6, 45k)Revisiting the Theory/Practice Divide in Gender, Sexuality and Law, with Kent and Westminster. (ESRC seminar series, £15k).Key Concepts in Feminist Legal Theory, with the Feminism and Legal Theory Project, Emory University (British Academy Networks £15k).

Current and past PhD supervisions:

Sameena Dalwai, The Ban on Bar Dancing in Bombay: A case study of law, gender and sexuality in practice (co-supervisor)Salida Nik Saleh, Women’s rights in Malaysia (co-supervisor)Mary Ewert (PhD 2010), Adolescent Citizenship: Reproductive privacy, welfare and regulationNicola Barker (PhD 2009), Not the Marrying Kind: Feminist Critiques of Marriage and the Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Relationships (co-supervisor)Jane Krishnadas (PhD 2005)

Selected Publications

  • Fletcher RMM. 2012. Legal Form, Commodities and Reproduction: Reading Pashukanis. In Feminist Encounters with Legal Philosophy. Drakopoulou M (Ed.). Routledge Cavendish.
  • Fletcher R. 2009. Embodied Practices. Feminist Legal Studies, vol. 17(3), 315-318. doi>
  • Fletcher R and Hunter R. 2009. Law, Gender and Sexuality: The Making of a Field.
  • Fletcher R, Fox M, McCandless J. 2008. Legal embodiment: analysing the body of healthcare law. Med Law Rev, vol. 16(3), 321-345. doi>
  • FLETCHER RMM. 2008. Reproductive Justice and Article 40 3 3. In The Unborn Child, Article 40.3.3 and Abortion in Ireland: Twenty-five Years of Protection?. Schweppe J (Ed.). The Liffey Press.

Full Publications List show

Journal Articles

  • Fletcher R. 2009. Embodied Practices. Feminist Legal Studies, vol. 17(3), 315-318. doi>
  • Fletcher R, Fox M, McCandless J. 2008. Legal embodiment: analysing the body of healthcare law. Med Law Rev, vol. 16(3), 321-345. doi>
  • FLETCHER RMM. 2006. Reproductive consumption. Feminist Theory, vol. 7(1), 27-48. doi>
  • Fletcher R. 2005. Abortion Needs or Abortion Rights? Claiming State Accountability for Women’s Reproductive Welfare. Feminist Legal Studies, vol. 13(1), 123-134. doi>
  • Buss D, Fletcher R, Monk D, Monro S, Phillips O. 2005. Introduction to "sexual movements andgendered boundaries: Legal negotiations of the global and the local'. SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES, vol. 14(1), 5-15. link> doi>
  • FLETCHER RMM. 2005. Reproducing Irishness: Race, Gender and Abortion Law. Canadian Journal of Women & The Law, vol. 17(2), 365-403.
  • FLETCHER RMM. 2003. Legal Forms and Reproductive Norms. Social and Legal Studies, vol. 12(2), 217-241. doi>
  • FLETCHER RMM. 2001. Post-colonial Fragments: Representations of Abortion in Irish Law and Politics. Journal of Law and Society, vol. 28(4), 568-589. doi>
  • Fletcher R. 2000. National crisis, supranational opportunity: the Irish construction of abortion as a European service. Reprod Health Matters, vol. 8(16), 35-44. doi>

Chapters

  • Fletcher RMM. 2012. Legal Form, Commodities and Reproduction: Reading Pashukanis. In Feminist Encounters with Legal Philosophy. Drakopoulou M (Ed.). Routledge Cavendish.
  • FLETCHER RMM. 2008. Reproductive Justice and Article 40 3 3. In The Unborn Child, Article 40.3.3 and Abortion in Ireland: Twenty-five Years of Protection?. Schweppe J (Ed.). The Liffey Press.
  • Fletcher R. 2002. Feminist Legal Theory. In An Introduction to Law and Social Theory. Banakar R and Travers M (Eds.). Hart, Oxford.

Other

  • Fletcher R and Hunter R. 2009. Law, Gender and Sexuality: The Making of a Field.
  • Fletcher R and Fox M. 2008. Theorising Legal Embodiment.
  • Fletcher R. 2007. Health law and the European Union. link> doi>
  • Buss D, Fletcher R, Monk D, Monro S, Phillips O. 2005. Sexual Movements and Gendered Boundaries: Legal Negotiations of the Global and the Local.
  • Fletcher R. 2004. Janice Richardson, Selves, Persons, Individuals. Philosophical Perspectives on Women and Legal Obligations.

Postgraduate Teaching:

LLM in Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights

MA in Medical Ethics and Law

MA in Childcare Law and Practice

MRes in Socio-Legal Research Training

Undergraduate Teaching:

Law of the European Union

Healthcare law

Law and Ethics

Law, Science and Society

Dissertation supervision:

Health law

Gender, sexuality and law

Jurisprudence and socio-legal theory

EU constitutional and discrimination law

Advisor, Doctors for Choice (Ireland)

Referee, ESRC and the Leverhulme Trus

Visiting fellow, Gender, Sexuality and Family Programme, School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast, Feb- April 2004

Visiting fellow, Feminism and Legal Theory Project, Cornell University, March 2003

Visiting fellow, Centre for Feminist Legal Research, Delhi, August 2000

Member, Law and Society Association (1995-)

Member, Socio-Legal Studies Association (1999-)

Member, Society of Legal Scholars (1999-)