ProfessorMaebh Harding

Prof Maebh Harding is a leading expert in Irish Family Law, Family Law in England and Wales and International Aspects of Family Law. Her work combines a critical feminist perspective with empirical, historical and doctrinal rigour to challenge legal regulation of family life. Here research is interdisciplinary in nature, crossing different legal and methodological fields and makes significant contributions to the areas of Family Law, Children’s Rights, Private International Law, Legal History, Law and Religion and Law and Gender.

Maebh is interested in supervising PhDs that examine law's effect on families and family life and the rights of women and children.

Maebh's previous PhD students include:

Dr  Lucy Crompton,  'Breadwinner bias in financial remedies on divorce' with Professor Juanita Elias and Dr Laura Lammasniemi at Warwick University. ESRC funded (awarded January 2025).  

Dr Joanna Harwood, Assistant Professor at the School of Law, University of Essex. PhD title, 'Child contact, domestic abuse and the legal value placed on children maintaining contact with both parents following parental separation.’ ESRC funded (awarded February 2019).

Dr Rachel Pimm-Smith, Assistant Professor at the School Law, University of Exeter. PhD title, ‘The State as Parent and Parent Knows Best: Was social engineering the objective of the increased regulation over poor law children and their care arrangements at the end of the nineteenth century, and did it achieve that objective?’ Funded by the Warwick Law School Scholarship (awarded March 2019).


Key words: Family Law, Gender, Feminism, Children's Rights, Comparative Family Law,  Private International Law