Professor Dawn Watkins

School of Law

Professor of Law

Project Lead: Project FORTITUDE

d.watkins@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 6827

EF01 , Bartolomé House

Full contact details

Professor Dawn Watkins
School of Law
EF01
Bartolomé House
Winter Street
Sheffield
S3 7ND

Profile: Dawn joined the School of Law here in Sheffield on 1 January 2022. She was previously a Professor of Law at the University of Leicester, where she had worked since 2005. Dawn is a qualified Solicitor but left legal practice soon after qualifying to pursue a PhD in Law.

Whilst at Leicester she was awarded a Distinguished Teaching Fellowship and short-listed for the National Law Teacher of the Year award. She was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2017.

In 2014-16 Dawn secured a £250,000 grant from the ESRC to explore children’s understanding of law in their everyday lives, using a digital game ‘Adventures with Lex’ created by the research team to gather research data.

This provided the proof of concept for her current project FORTITUDE, funded by a €2 million grant from the ERC, which aims to work with to improve children’s legal capability. The project will provide a range of game-based resources that will improve the lives of children by providing them with opportunities to improve their legal capabilities, as well as providing a framework for the development of these resources in other populations.

In addition to her academic work, Dawn sits as a Fee-Paid Judge of the First Tier Tribunal, assigned to the Health, Education and Social Care Chamber.

Qualifications: PhD (Law) University of Leicester

Research interests

Children and the Law
Gamification of Research Methods
Law and Narrative

Publications

Books

() Research Methods in Law. Routledge.

Edited books

(Ed.) (2013) Introduction..
Watkins D & Burton M (Ed.) () Research Methods in Law. Routledge.

Journal articles

Watkins D (2022) Exploring the role of domestic law in human rights education. Human Rights Education Review, 5(2), 98-116. View this article in WRRO
Watkins D & Moseley A (2022) Envisioning research through a lens of play. The Journal of Play in Adulthood, 4(1).
Watkins D (2022) Reimagining the relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach. International Journal of Public Legal Education, 5(1), 4-36.
Law EL-C, Soleimani S, Watkins D & Barwick J (2021) Automatic voice emotion recognition of child-parent conversations in natural settings. Behaviour & Information Technology, 40(11), 1072-1089.
Watkins D & Guihen L (2019) Using narrative and metaphor in formative feedback: Exploring students' responses. Journal of Legal Education, 68(1), 154-175.
Watkins D, Law EL-C, Barwick J & Kirk E (2018) Exploring children's understanding of law in their everyday lives. Legal Studies, 38(1), 59-78.
Barwick J, Watkins D, Kirk E & Law E (2018) Adventures with Lex: The gamification of research?. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 24(3), 229-250.
Watkins D & Canto-Lopez M (2016) Working with law students to develop legal literacy materials. The Law Teacher, 50(2), 195-208.
Watkins D (2012) Alexander Pope and The Rape of the Lock – Conciliation or Judgment?. Law, Culture and the Humanities, 8(2), 244-265.
Watkins D (2011) The Role of Narratives in Legal Education. Liverpool Law Review, 32(2), 113-133.
Watkins D (2010) Podcasting: a lawyer's tale. The Law Teacher, 44(2), 169-180.
Watkins D (2007) The Influence of the Art for Art's Sake Movement upon English Law, 1780–1959. The Journal of Legal History, 28(2), 233-256.
Kemp V & Watkins D () Exploring Children’s Understanding of the Legal Rights of Suspects in England and Wales. Youth Justice, 147322542110305-147322542110305.
Watkins D, Lai-Chong Law E, Barwick J & Kirk E () ‘If you are 10, you go to prison’: children’s understanding of the age of criminal responsibility. Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, 67(3), 311-326.

Chapters

Burton M & Watkins D (2020) Interdisciplinary approaches and collaboration in legal education in England and Wales, Key Directions in Legal Education: National and International Perspectives (pp. 35-47).
Watkins D (2018) Dagenham Car Plant Strike, 1968, Women’s Legal Landmarks: Celebrating the History of Women and Law in the UK and Ireland (pp. 291-296).
Cammiss S & Watkins D (2017) Legal research in the humanities, Research Methods in Law (pp. 86-102).
Cammiss S & Watkins D (2013) Legal research in the humanities, Research Methods in Law (pp. 71-84).

Conference proceedings papers

Magkafa D, Watkins D, Hemsley S, Mills C, George A & Wood C (2024) A child-centred design evaluation of a learning game to improve children’s legal capability. Proceedings of the 18th European Conference on Games Based Learning, Vol. 18(1) (pp 580-589). Aarhus University, Denmark, 3 October 2024 - 3 October 2024. View this article in WRRO
Magkafa D (2023) Involving Children in the Design of Gamified Law-Related Tests. Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference
Law EL-C, Watkins DE, Barwick JPL & Kirk ES (2016) An Experiential Approach to the Design and Evaluation of a Gamified Research Tool for Law in Children's Lives. Proceedings of the The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children

Research group

Title/Description: Project FORTITUDE

Awarding Body: European Research Council
People Involved: Collaborating with Professor Clare Wood, NTU
Dates: 1 January 2022 to 31 May 2025
Amount (EUR): c. 2 million euros

Title/Description: Law in Children's Lives

Awarding Body: ESRC
Dates: 2014-2016

Teaching interests

The role of narrative and metaphor in teaching
Law and story-telling
Property law
Children and the law

Teaching activities

Module I teach:

Undergraduate

Property Law
Children and the Law

Professional activities and memberships: Editorial Board of the Law Teacher Journal