Lucinda Ferguson

Associate Professor of Family Law, University of Oxford; Tutorial Fellow in Law, Oriel College. 

TEACHING

Family Law (BA special option); Children, Families, and the State (BCL option); Tort Law (BA core subject).  I am the Senior Member for the Children's and Family Law Discussion Group. 

As part of the undergraduate Family Law course, I lecture on financial provision upon relationship breakdown, children's rights, child protection, and parenthood and parental responsibility.  My postgraduate teaching centres on the legal regulation of children (children's rights theory, international children's rights, welfare and wellbeing, and children and poverty).

If you are interested in pursuing Family Law at the graduate level, either as the subject-matter of a BCL dissertation, or for the MPhil, MLitt, or DPhil, I would be happy to discuss potential topics broadly within the fields of Family Law, Children's Law, or Education Law. 

PROFILE AND BIO

I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.  In 2015, I was awarded a Distinction on the Post-Graduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. 

In 2016, I was a finalist for Oxford University Press' national Law Teacher of the Year award.  I have received multiple university teaching awards:  In 2015, I was awarded a Teaching Excellence Award from the University; in 2011-12, I was awarded the Oxford University Student Union Teaching Award for the Most Acclaimed Lecturer in the Social Sciences Division.

Outside of the University, I am an Associate Member of 1 King's Bench Walk.   

I pursued my first two law degrees at Oxford (including a year studying at the University of Konstanz in Germany), before undertaking further graduate studies at Queen's University in Canada.  In the course of my graduate studies, I was a recipient of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars' Foundation Scholarship, the Commonwealth Scholarship, and AHRC graduate funding in addition to competitive internal awards.  From 2005 to 2007, I was an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Alberta in Canada.

RESEARCH

My research is centred on family law, children's law, and education law.  Copies of my recent publications and presentations are available here.  In particular, I work on family law theory, especially: children's rights and interests in domestic, European, and international law; aspects of private ordering and financial provision upon relationship breakdown; and, within education law, especially exclusion from school.  Whilst my perspective is theoretical, my work is also deeply practical and concerned with how we might draw on the underlying theoretical arguments to improve outcomes for children and families regulated by law.