Staff members and course content can change from year to year. For detailed information about the academic year 2018-19, please visit our unit catalogue.

What is your role at the University of Bristol?

I’m a PhD student within the law school. My specialist area is intellectual property law – I’m researching patents and genetic inventions. I did my MSc at Bristol and then stayed.

How are you involved with the International Foundation Programme?

I’m the unit director for British Constitutional History. I run lectures and seminars that give students an introduction to constitutional law. They also learn wider legal skills to take forward to undergraduate level, such as reading cases, reading statutes and thinking critically about the law.

What’s it like teaching on the International Foundation Programme?

There’s a great mixture of individuals from really diverse backgrounds on the International Foundation Programme. It adds a different perspective. The students can bring in aspects of the law in their home countries, which helps us think about laws and regulations in a different way. The students are also very passionate about British constitutional law as a subject.

Do you see students develop during the International Foundation Programme?

I can’t answer personally, as I only began teaching on the course this year. However, other academics say that they see individuals growing in confidence. Students learn to form their own opinions, speak out with certainty and challenge their peers.

International Foundation Programme students start quite young and are working in a foreign language, so they grow in confidence a lot. They also learn a lot of skills – research skills and library skills – that undergraduate students will have to pick up in the first couple of months.

Is the International Foundation Programme integrated into the University?

The head of the Law School goes and speaks to International Foundation Programme students about careers in law and what studying undergraduate law at Bristol is like.

The students have opportunities to come to the Law School and its libraries. They also get invited to undergraduate events. This helps them experience what it’s like to be a first-year law student.

What would you say to a prospective student?

The International Foundation Programme is a great opportunity to get to grips with things that could get taken for granted if you went straight into undergraduate study – for instance, the difference between barristers and solicitors, or the quirks of the British legal system.

The programme teaches you to think critically about laws – you don’t just regurgitate them, you think about them. This is a good skill for going on to be a solicitor or a barrister.

It’s a really fun programme too. I try to teach it in a different way – lots of it is interactive, not just lectures. It’s an opportunity to work on presentation and writing skills. This will help you become a strong overall student going into undergraduate law at Bristol.