Dr Stephanie Roberts
I am currently a Senior Lecturer in the Law School. I obtained an LLB (Hons) degree from UNL, an LLM from the LSE in Criminology and Criminal Justice and a PhD from the LSE for a thesis entitled 'The decision-making process of the criminal division of the Court of Appeal.' I have worked as a legal researcher at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, the University of Haifa and the LSE, and taught part-time at the LSE for 6 years before joining the University of Westminster in 2003.
I am currently module leader of Advanced Criminal Law and the core Criminal Law module. I was awarded a departmental teaching prize at the LSE in 2002 and was the recipient of a University of Westminster Teaching Fellowship in 2007 which was awarded in recognition of excellence in teaching and learning. I have also been the recipient of a number of Student Union Staff Appreciation Awards including one for the most nominations of academic staff in the university. In 2009, I was a Visiting Professor at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University, Ohio USA teaching and researching into the causes and remedies of wrongful convictions from a comparative perspective. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
I am the PhD Admissions Tutor in the law school and I am a Teaching, Learning and Quality Representative sitting on validation and revalidation panels throughout the university. I have previously been an External Examiner at Birkbeck, University of London, the University of Huddersfield and I am currently an External Examiner at the University of Manchester. I am also an Associate Examiner for Criminal Law on the University of London's External LLB programme.
I have worked as a consultant for JUSTICE on criminal appeals and I have been invited to give presentations at various conferences. From 2011 to 2014, I was the Practice, Profession and Ethics subject convenor for the Society of Legal Scholars and I have given papers at various conferences. I have refereed articles for a number of journals including the Sydney Law Review (Australia), New Law Criminal Law Review (international journal), Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Canada) and Criminology and Criminal Justice (UK) as well as book proposals for various publishers. I have recently been invited to join the Advisory Board of FACT (Falsely Accused Carers and Teachers organisation). I write the Miscarriages of Justice section for Westlaw's legal encyclopedia, Insight.
My main areas of research are criminal appeal systems and processes with particular focus on appeal systems as a mechanism for rectifying miscarriages of justice. I am interested in all areas of criminal law and criminal procedure. I am currently a member of the Centre for Law, Society and Popular culture at Westminster and I have collaborated with colleagues on various projects with emphasis on the role of criminal law on popular culture.
I am interested in all aspects of miscarriages of justice and my research on this has included articles on the appeal system in England and Wales with particular emphasis on the difficulties the factually innocent face in overturning their convictions, and the compensation scheme for miscarriages of justice. I have co-written articles on Innocence Projects and the Criminal Cases Review Commission and I am currently working on an empirical project on the judgments of the Court of Appeal to further understand its powers and decision-making processes.
I am interested in supervising PhD students in all areas of criminal law, criminal procedure and evidence, and miscarriages of justice.