Assistant Professor in Law and Safeguarding (Research & Education)

Working at Durham University

A globally outstanding centre of teaching and research excellence, a warm and friendly place to work, a unique and historic setting - Durham is a university like no other.

As one of the UK's leading universities, Durham is an incredible place to define your career. The University is located within a beautiful historic city, home to a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and surrounded by stunning countryside. Our talented scholars and researchers from around the world are tackling global issues and making a difference to people's lives.

We believe that inspiring our people to do outstanding things at Durham enables Durham people to do outstanding things in the world. Being a part of Durham is about more than just the success of the University, it's also about contributing to the success of the city, county and community.

Our University Strategy is built on three pillars of research, education and wider student experience, but also on our keen sense of community and of inspiring others to achieve their potential.

Our Purpose and Values

We want our University to be a place where people can be free to be themselves, no matter what their identity or background. Together, we celebrate difference, value one another and are each responsible for creating an inclusive community that is respectful and fair for all.

Find out more about the benefits of working at the University and what it is like to live and work in the Durham area on our Why Durham? information page.

The School

Durham Law School is a leading law school. Consistently ranked in the Top 10 nationally and Top 100 globally, it has been growing strongly over the past few years and now comprises a community of over 100 academics and professional support staff. Durham Law School fosters innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to legal research and wishes to attract scholars with strong backgrounds in these areas.

The School is housed in the iconic Palatine Centre overlooking Durham Cathedral in the heart of the city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is located on the main East Coast train line connecting to London and Edinburgh and also within convenient reach of Newcastle Airport. The School has an extensive network of leading international partner institutions and close ties with the City of London and the Inns of Court. It counts among its alumni two Supreme Court Justices (Retired).

This post offers an exciting opportunity to make a major contribution to the development of internationally excellent research and teaching while allowing you unrivalled opportunities to progress and embed your career in an exciting and progressive institution. For more information, please visit our School's pages .

Our top-ranked global law courses are very competitive with an excellent and diverse student population from across the world delivering a cutting-edge, research-led curriculum with a commitment to small-group teaching through seminars and tutorials much prized by employers.

Our School's strategic objectives put EDI at the heart of everything we do. We are committed to Equality Diversity and Inclusion and actively develop our policies and procedures to ensure that everyone within our community is treated fairly and is provided with the same opportunities. This applies to our everyday work in teaching, research and administration, including academic progression and promotion processes. Our Law School holds an Athena Swan Bronze award.

The Law School at Durham University seeks to appoint a talented individual to the role of Assistant Professor in Law and Safeguarding. We welcome applications from those with research interests in child protection law, family law, or human rights law with a particular focus on children's rights. The post holder must be able to teach at undergraduate level on one of the Law School's core law modules. For more information, please visit our School pages at Durham Law School - Durham University .

This post offers an exciting opportunity to make a major contribution to the development of internationally excellent research and teaching while allowing you unrivalled opportunities to progress and embed your career in an exciting and progressive institution. The Law School provides a supportive environment for its community of academics, which comprises a generous sabbatical policy and an infrastructure of high-profile research centres that bring together colleagues for collaborative projects. One of our newest centres is the Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding, to which this post is being recruited.

The successful candidate will be on our Education and Research academic pathway. The role is substantially funded by an award from the Strategic Research Fund at Durham University establishing the Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding. The role will be focused on the objectives of the GCCS for the four-year SRF award period, with minimal teaching and citizenship duties during that time. The split between research, teaching and citizenship is subject to change over the course of the SRF award period, depending on progress against the funding objectives.

The Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding

In September 2025 Durham University will launch the Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding (GCCS). The GCCS, led by Durham's Sociology Department, Business School and School of Education, will bring together departments (including the Law School) across the four faculties of the University to: transform how societies understand and deliver services that safeguard young people beyond their homes; create systems that look beyond the capacity of parents to protect children; and build sustainable partnerships in which safeguarding is truly everybody's business. This is not a Centre simply focused on researching and improving existing safeguarding practices; it is instead committed to a radical transformation in how safeguarding is conceptualised, studied, and practiced, and by whom. The Centre will achieve this by building a critical interdisciplinary effort to cement an emergent field of research. It will implement that research in collaboration with others to reform policy and legal frameworks, and the organisational practices, that govern the provision and evaluation of services around the world. It will scale that implementation through commercial partnerships with industries beyond traditional safeguarding partnerships; providing various routes to learn about Contextual Safeguarding that transcends sector boundaries.

The Law School, and this post, will play a critical role in the Centre's development. Domestic and international law in respect of children's welfare and children's rights has been at the heart of Contextual Safeguarding since its inception. The approach has reimagined ways to apply primary child protection legislation in situations of extra-familial harm (including exploitation and serious violence) and raised questions about the relationship between criminal and welfare legal frameworks in promoting children's best interests. Various legal challenges characterise discourses associated with Contextual Safeguarding including: depriving young people of their liberty on welfare grounds, rights to education, privacy, protection and family life for young people who have been harmed, and/or harmed others, and the role of the state vs. the role of parents in safeguarding children beyond the home. The interdisciplinary nature of the GCCS opens new avenues of legal exploration including what safeguarding could and should look like in hospitality, sports, education and faith settings, and the conceptual and practical relationships between legal, social and moral duties. The post holder will play an integral role in helping the GCCS engage with, resolve and transform these debates in collaboration with international partners.

Assistant Professors at Durham

Assistant Professors on the Education and Research track are encouraged to focus on research and teaching but are also expected to engage in wider citizenship to enhance their own development, support their department and discipline, and contribute to the wider student experience.

Academic colleagues are supported to publish excellent research in their area of interest with a focus on high quality outputs (including monographs and journal articles), rather than quantity.

We aim to support your research needs, including practical help such as resources to attend conferences and to fund research activities, as well as a generous research leave policy and a designated mentor.

Durham University is also committed to ensuring outstanding teaching quality, stimulating learning environments, and innovative curricula for all our students. You will be supported to develop your teaching expertise and skills.

We are confident that our recruitment process allows us to attract and select the best talent to Durham. We, therefore, offer a reduced probation period of 1 year for our Assistant Professors and thereafter, subject to satisfactory performance, your position will be confirmed as permanent.

We strive to provide a working and teaching environment that is inclusive and welcoming and where ...