Feminist Methodologies in Law

What does it mean to apply a feminist approach to law? Does feminist scholarship apply a distinct methodological approach? In this session I suggest that at the heart of feminist method is the application of gender as a category of analysis to a field of knowledge to generate new questions capable of informing and transforming research agendas. I assess the potential and limitations of such an approach and demonstrate the range of techniques that feminist scholars have deployed to investigate law and legal phenomena.

Professor Joanne Conaghan joined the University of Bristol Law School in August 2013 having previously taught at the Universities of Kent, Exeter, and San Diego California. A graduate and postgraduate of St Hugh’s College Oxford, she has written extensively about issues relating to gender and law and is globally recognized as a leading scholar in the field of feminist legal studies. She is author of Law and Gender (2014) and co-author of Sexual History and the Rape Trial (with Yvette Russell, 2023) and The Wrongs of Tort (with Wade Mansell, 1993 & 1999). Professor Conaghan also co-edited The New Oxford Companion to Law (with Peter Cane, 2008). She has been a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences since 2011 and of the British Academy since 2021. She acted as Chair of the REF2021 Law Subpanel and as Deputy Chair in 2014. In 2024, Professor Joanne Conaghan’s contribution to legal scholarship was recognized by the award of Best Contribution to the Socio-legal Community (SLSA, 2024). In 2025, her monograph with Yvette Russell, Sexual History Evidence and the Rape Trial, won the Hart-SLSA Book Prize and the Socio-Legal Theory and History Prize (SLSA, 2025).

From 2008–2011, Professor Joanne Conaghan was Head of the University of Kent Law School and from 2014-2018 she was Head of the University of Bristol Law School. Her research is currently focused on legal theory and law and sexual violence.