Professor Dawn Watkins
School of Law
Professor of Law
Project Lead: Project FORTITUDE
+44 114 222 6827
Full contact details
School of Law
EF01
Bartolome虂 House
Winter Street
Sheffield
S3 7ND
- Profile
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Dawn joined the School of Law here in 精东影业on 1 January 2022. She was previously a Professor of Law at the University of Leicester, where she had worked since 2005. Dawn is a qualified Solicitor but left legal practice soon after qualifying to pursue a PhD in Law.
Whilst at Leicester she was awarded a Distinguished Teaching Fellowship and short-listed for the National Law Teacher of the Year award. She was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2017.
In 2014-16 Dawn secured a 拢250,000 grant from the Economic and Social Research Council to explore children鈥檚 understanding of law in their everyday lives, using a digital game 鈥楢dventures with Lex鈥 created by the research team to gather research data.
This provided the proof of concept for project FORTITUDE, an action research project funded by a c.鈧2 million grant from the European Research Council, which completed in May 2025. It aims to improve children and young people鈥檚 legal capability.Dawn and her research team have worked with children and young people to create a game called Law Yeah! which is available both as a digital game and as a board game. As well as drawing on theories of play and serious game design, the development of the Law Yeah! game was informed by a new framework for developing children鈥檚 legal capability, created in this project.
In addition to her academic work, Dawn sits as a Fee-Paid Judge of the First Tier Tribunal, assigned to the Health, Education and Social Care Chamber.
- Qualifications
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PhD (Law) University of Leicester
- Research interests
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- Children and the Law
- Gamification of Research Methods
- Law and Narrative
- Publications
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Books
- . Routledge.
Edited books
- ..
- . Routledge.
Journal articles
- . Human Rights Education Review, 5(2), 98-116.
- . The Journal of Play in Adulthood, 4(1).
- . International Journal of Public Legal Education, 5(1), 4-36.
- . Behaviour & Information Technology, 40(11), 1072-1089.
- Using narrative and metaphor in formative feedback: Exploring students' responses. Journal of Legal Education, 68(1), 154-175.
- . Legal Studies, 38(1), 59-78.
- . Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 24(3), 229-250.
- . The Law Teacher, 50(2), 195-208.
- . Law, Culture and the Humanities, 8(2), 244-265.
- . Liverpool Law Review, 32(2), 113-133.
- . The Law Teacher, 44(2), 169-180.
- . The Journal of Legal History, 28(2), 233-256.
- . Youth Justice, 147322542110305-147322542110305.
- . Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, 67(3), 311-326.
Chapters
- , Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Legal Education (pp. 56-58). Edward Elgar Publishing
- Interdisciplinary approaches and collaboration in legal education in England and Wales, Key Directions in Legal Education: National and International Perspectives (pp. 35-47).
- Dagenham Car Plant Strike, 1968, Women鈥檚 Legal Landmarks: Celebrating the History of Women and Law in the UK and Ireland (pp. 291-296).
- , Research Methods in Law (pp. 86-102).
- , Research Methods in Law (pp. 71-84).
Conference proceedings papers
- . Proceedings of the 18th European Conference on Games Based Learning, Vol. 18(1) (pp 580-589). Aarhus University, Denmark, 3 October 2024 - 3 October 2024.
- . Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference
- . Proceedings of the The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
- . Routledge.
- Research group
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Title/Description: Project FORTITUDE
- Awarding Body: European Research Council
- People Involved: Collaborating with Professor Clare Wood, NTU
- Dates: 1 January 2022 to 31 May 2025
- Amount (EUR): c. 2 million euros
Title/Description: Law in Children's Lives
- Awarding Body: ESRC
- Dates: 2014-2016
- Teaching interests
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- The role of narrative and metaphor in teaching
- Law and story-telling
- Property law
- Children and the law
- Teaching activities
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Module I teach:
Undergraduate
- Property Law
- Children and the Law
- Professional activities and memberships
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Editorial Board of the Law Teacher Journal