Professor Yvette Russell
BA(Auck.), LLB(Auck.), LLM(NYU), PhD(Kent)
Expertise
Continental philosophy, feminist theory, psychoanalysis, race and decolonisation, criminal justice and criminal law, rape law and the rape trial.
Current positions
Professor of Law and Feminist Theory
University of Bristol Law School
Contact
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Biography
Yvette Russell joined the University of Bristol in 2014. She was admitted as a Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand in 2006 and was the Editor-in-Chief of the international law journal Feminist Legal Studies from 2019-2023. Professor Russell was the recipient in 2017 of the Penny Pether Award for Law and Language Scholarship and was a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow in 2021-2022. Her book Sexual History and the Rape Trial (Bristol University Press, 2023), co-authored with Joanne Conaghan, was awarded the Hart-SLSA Book Prize 2025, and the SLSA Socio-Legal Theory and History Book Prize 2025. She is a University Research Fellow in 2025-2026.
Research interests
My research is interdisciplinary and combines study in the law and humanities. I am a specialist in continental feminist philosophy and write mainly about sexual violence and the criminal law in England and Wales. My current research looks at how we can productively theorise the end of sexual violence, with reference to feminist philosophy and indigenous feminisms, and argues that we must situate resistance to sexual violence within a context of revolutionary decolonial politics. I am interested in working with PhD candidates who have particular interests in interdisciplinary theoretical work.
Projects and supervisions
Publications
Recent publications
13/07/2024Sexual History Evidence in Rape Trials
British Journal of Criminology
Sexual History Evidence in Review
New Directions in Sexual Violence Scholarship
Toward a Sexuate Jurisprudence and on the ‘Second Rape’ of Law
What is Sexual Difference?
Troubling Law’s Traditional Canon by Teaching Law and Race
Decolonisation, Anti-Racism and Legal Pedagogy
Sexual History Evidence and the Rape Trial
Sexual History Evidence and the Rape Trial
Teaching
I am on research leave in the academic year 2025/26
