Professor Sarah Blandy
Position: Professor of LawEmail Address: S.Blandy@sheffield.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)114 222 6776
Feedback and Consultation Availability: You can book an appointment online to see me
Academic Profile
After graduating in Law from the University of Warwick, I qualified and practised as a solicitor for ten years. I then worked for the Housing Department at Sheffield City Council, before starting my academic career at Sheffield Hallam University. From 2005 I held various academic posts at the School of Law, University of Leeds, and I joined Sheffield as a professor in 2012.
I am co-Director of the FreeLaw legal advice clinic, and enjoy working with the student volunteers and making good use of my previous experience as a legal practitioner.
My research concerns ‘property law in the real world’, a perspective I try to integrate into my teaching.
Qualifications
LLB, Solicitor of the Supreme Court
Teaching and Learning
I enjoy teaching at all levels, and aim to convey my enthusiasm for the subjects I teach and to encourage students in creative thinking and critical analysis. I bring a socio-legal focus to my teaching based on my research, so that the material covered is related to the real world.
The modules I teach are:
| Undergraduate |
|---|
| Property Law (Land Law, Equity and Trusts) (LAW137) |
|
Special Project: Pro Bono (LAW3043) |
Research
My research is interdisciplinary and empirical, focusing on socio-legal aspects of property law, including:
- tenure and rights
- collective and individual property rights
- multi-owned property
- regulation of conduct, dispute resolution, and access to justice, amongst residential occupiers
- the spatial boundaries of law, especially in relation to fortified homes and gated communities
I am currently working on a book on collective property for Palgrave Macmillan's Socio-Legal Series;
Societies
I am a member of the Socio-Legal Studies Association
Areas of Research Supervision
I would be delighted to hear from students wishing to carry out research in those aspects of Property Law in which I have expertise.
I am currently supervising:
- Molly Matthewman, whose research investigates the role of law in Graduate Housing in London, and the relationship between tenure, identity and 'home'.
My following supervisees successfully completed their PhDs in 2017-18:
- Richard Goulding, funded by ESRC / White Rose, whose research investigates the financial, legal and social geographies of low income urban housing in Britain.
- Edward Mitchell, funded by ESRC, whose research investigates the role law plays in retail-led urban regeneration schemes, through an actor network approach.
Recent Invited Papers and Keynote Lectures
- ‘Commonhold finances, and preventing insolvency’, Law Commission consultation event on Reinvigorating Commonhold, Manchester, 19 February 2019
- ‘The wrong starting point? Multi-owned properties and the English leasehold system; common problems across jurisdictions’, International Research Forum on Multi-owned Properties, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, 17-18 January 2019
- ‘Property 'from the ground up’', International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Onati, Spain, 24 November 2018
- Understanding ‘space’ in law: gardens and gardening’, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, 19 February 2018
- ‘Copropriété in England and Wales’, Séminaire sur la copropriété (workshop on multi-owned property), PUCA, Paris, 26 January 2018
- ‘The Dynamics of Enduring Property Relations’ (with Susan Bright and Sarah Nield) keynote talk at the annual conference of Australasian Teachers of Property Law, Curtin University, Perth, Australia, 26-29 September 2017
- ‘Defended homes and enclaves: causes and consequences’, research seminar at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia, 20 September 2017
- 'Sharing in the high-rise: law and place', keynote talk at the Symposium on Comparative Social Sustainability: Condominium Law, Living and Landscapes, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Europe), Barcelona, 21-22 November 2016
- 'Ownership and belonging in urban green space' (with Simone Abram, Anthropology, Durham), Symposium on Legal Strategies for the Development and Protection of Communal Property, School of Law, University of Sheffield, 23-24 May 2016.
Key Projects/Grants
| Title/Description: | Advisory Board member for research project on Materialising Kinship: Cycles of life at the Norwegian cabin |
|---|---|
| Awarding Body: | Norwegian Research Council |
| People Involved: | Marianne Lien, University of Oslo and Simone Abram, University of Durham |
| Dates: | 2016-2020 |
| Amount: | £667,000 |
| Title/Description: | Invited seminar on 'Enduring Property Relations' |
|---|---|
| Awarding Body: | Modern Law Review |
| People Involved: | Professor Susan Bright (University of Oxford) and Professor Sarah Nield (University of Southampton) |
| Date: | May2016 |
| Amount: | £5000 |
| Title/Description: | Homelessness Prevention for Women and Children Who Have Experienced Domestic and Family Violence: Innovations in Policy and Practice |
|---|---|
| Awarding Body: | Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute |
| People Involved: | Dr. Angela Spinney, Swinburne University, Australia |
| Dates: | 2010-2012 |
| Amount: | AUS $101,570 |
Key Publications
Books
- Atkinson R & Blandy S (2016) Domestic Fortress: Fear and the New Home Front. Manchester: Manchester University Press. View this article in WRRO
Journal articles
- Blandy S, Bright S & Nield S (2018) The Dynamics of Enduring Property Relationships in Land. The Modern Law Review, 81(1), 85-113. View this article in WRRO
- Blandy S (2014) Socio-legal approaches to property law research. Property Law Review, 3(3), 166-175. View this article in WRRO
- Blandy S & Wang F (2013) Curbing the power of developers? Law and power in Chinese and English gated urban enclaves. Geoforum, 47, 199-208.
- Blandy S & Sibley D (2010) Law, boundaries and the production of space. Social and Legal Studies, 19(3), 275-284.
- Atkinson R & Blandy S (2009) A picture of the floating world: Grounding the secessionary affluence of the residential cruise liner. Antipode, 41(1), 92-110.
- Atkinson R & Blandy S (2007) Panic rooms: The rise of defensive homeownership. Housing Studies, 22(4), 443-458.
Chapters
- Blandy S & Abram S (2018) Ownership and belonging in urban green space In XU T & Clarke AC (Ed.), Legal Strategies for the Development and Protection of Communal Property; Proceedings of the British Academy Oxford: Oxford University Press. View this article in WRRO
- Blandy S (2018) Precarious Homes: the Sharing Continuum In Carr H, Edgworth B & Hunter C (Ed.), Law and the Precarious Home: Socio Legal Perspectives on the Home in Insecure Times Hart Publishing View this article in WRRO
- Blandy S (2016) Socio-legal Approaches to Property Law Research, Researching Property Law (pp. 24-42). Macmillan Education UK View this article in WRRO
- Blandy S (2013) Collective Property: Owning and Sharing Residential Space, Modern Studies in Property Law (pp. 152-172).
- Blandy S (2011) Gating as governance: the boundaries spectrum In Crawford A (Ed.), Social and Situational Crime Prevention: International and Comparative Criminal Justice and Urban Governance (pp. 519-544). CUP
Edited books
- (Ed.) (2015) Researching Property Law. Palgrave Macmillan.
- (Ed.) (2010) Multi-owned Housing: Law, Power and Practice. Routledge.