Joanne 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, Joanne 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). Joanne also co-edited The New Oxford Companion to Law (with Peter Cane, 2008). Joanne 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, Joanne's contribution to legal scholarship was recognised 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, Joanne was Head of the University of Kent Law School and from 2014-2018 she was Head of the University of Bristol Law School.

Joanne's research is currently focused on tort law and legal theory.

You can follow Joanne on

twitter: @joanneconaghan 

bluesky: @joanneconaghan.bsky.social

Watch Joanne deliver her University of Bristol inaugural lecture in the Wills Memorial Building on 19th February 2015 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1bawCpPr30

 Research interests: Sexual violence and law, jurisprudence and legal theory, human rights, feminism and gender studies, tort law, labour and equality law.