Vice Chancellor's Office

Fiona Cownie has been involved in education all her life, as student, teacher and, since becoming an academic in 1987, as a researcher. Having graduated in English Language and Literature from Bristol University, she trained as a teacher at the then College of Ripon and York St John, and worked in primary schools in Nottinghamshire for three years. She then returned to full-time study, graduating with First Class honours in Law from Leicester University, and going on to hold an AHRC Postgraduate Studentship at the LSE, where she completed an LL.M., before being called to the Bar. She began her academic career at the University of Leicester in 1987, and began to build a reputation as an expert in legal education. In 2003 she took up the H.K. Bevan Chair at Hull University, a post she held until moving to Keele in 2006 to take up a Chair in Law.

Professor Cownie has published widely in the area of legal education, including a study of academic lawyers Legal Academics: culture and identities (Hart Publishing, 2004) and a history of the Society of Legal Scholars, co-authored with her colleague Professor Ray Cocks (A Great and Noble Occupation! Hart Publishing, 2009). She has also edited several collections of essays on legal education, including Stakeholders in the Law School (Hart Publishing, 2010). Other educational research includes a series of articles on teaching legal English to international students, based on an empirical study of English Language support in the U.K. ( see for example “International Students and Language Support : A New Survey”F. Cownie & W. Addison (1996) Studies in Higher Education  pp.221-231). Professor Cownie’s other research interest is the English legal system and the actors within it; she co-authors a leading socio-legal textbook, English Legal System in Context, published by Oxford University Press and currently in its 6th edition. She has also co-authored, with her colleague Professor Anthony Bradney, an ethnographic study of dispute resolution by Quakers Living Without Law (Ashgate, 2000). Professor Cownie’s approach to research is interdisciplinary, and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Fiona Cownie is the Honorary Secretary of the Council of the Academy of Social Sciences and Chair of the Legal Education Committee of the Society of Legal Scholars. She sits on the Advisory Board of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, where she also holds a Senior Research Fellowship. Professor Cownie is a former President of the European Law Faculties Association, and of the Society of Legal Scholars, and a former Vice Chair of the Socio-Legal Studies Association. From 2012-13 she sat as one of only two academic members of the Consultation Steering Panel of the national Legal Education and Training Review. Her interest in education at all levels remains active; in addition to her PVC role she currently teaches a Legal Skills module for first year undergraduates at Keele, supervises three PhD students, and delivers sessions regularly at the Socio-Legal Studies Association Postgraduate Conference.

• Strategic oversight of learning and teaching
• Chair of Learning & Teaching Committee
• Chair of Level II and Final Examination Boards
• Chair of Education Student Liaison Committee
• Student complaints
• Strategic lead for student welfare
• Links with Students' Union
• Links with Keele Postgraduate Association
• Strategic lead for enhancement
• Strategic lead for employability and employer engagement
• Strategic lead for development of programmes for new types of student (including those connected with Active Ageing)
• Strategic lead for academy links with any government departments located at Keele

In addition to the above responsibilities, any of the team may undertake short term 'projects' at the request of the Vice-Chancellor.