Dr Hannah Hirst

Hannah is the Co-Director of the Children and the Law Research Group within the School of Law and convenes Children and the Law and Contemporary Issues in Law and Social Justice. She also provides lectures and tutorials to final year students on the Principles in Healthcare Law, Current Issues in Health Law, Ethics and Policy and Family Law modules. 

Hannah was awarded her PhD from the University of Liverpool in 2023. Her doctoral research examined the administration of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in England through a children’s rights lens. She is broadly interested in research concerning gender, children’s rights, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, creative methods and social theories of power.

Hannah is currently working on three research projects at Sheffield. The first project is funded by the Socio-Legal Studies Association and explores trans and non-binary children’s involvement in clinical decision-making through creative methods. The second project concerns power theory and children’s rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Hannah recently published a paper in the International Journal of Children’s Rights on this subject and is now in the midst of a follow-up project  which will evaluate power relations and children’s rights in the context of gender affirmative treatment. Hannah is also taking part in the KU Leuven ‘COMPASS: experimental COMParative legal AnalySiS’ project’ with internal and external colleagues.

Hanah has previously published research relating to LGBTQ+ conversion 'therapy' and young peoples’ access to puberty blockers in England. She is also involved in Professor Aoife Daly's 'Sex Education as a Human Right' research project and is an external member of the European Children's Rights Unit.

As an internal member of the European Children's Rights Unit, Hannah authored and co-authored briefing papers highlighting the impact of Covid-19 and Brexit on children's rights, organised an International Symposium on Children's Rights and helped to develop a series of master classes on how to bring theory to bear on children's rights research with ECRU colleagues.