Research portfolio
Projects as a map
of the research programme.
The projects connect research questions, methods, institutional contexts, publications, talks and potential collaborations. They are organised by intellectual contribution rather than employer or chronology.
Current · Public and corporate remedy systems
Rights-Compatible Procedural Vitality
How can formally compliant procedures retain meaningful voice, contestability, professional judgement, effective remedy and institutional learning?
Core aims
To identify procedural ritualisation across public hybrid-justice and corporate-accountability systems and develop a transferable rights-based diagnostic framework. The project examines how AI-supported intake, classification, summarisation, drafting and review may preserve or weaken procedural fairness and meaningful human oversight.
Methods
Comparative socio-legal and doctrinal analysis; procedural rules, guidance, templates, screening and intake materials; reporting practices and AI-governance policies; selected family-mediation, court-connected mediation and corporate-remedy case studies; expert consultation and practitioner engagement.
Current outputs
- Risks of Bureaucracy in Family Mediation and Guardrails for AI Use — chapter under review following abstract acceptance.
- Conceptual article on procedural ritualisation.
- Methodological article and diagnostic framework for procedural vitality.
- Applied article on AI-supported grievance and compliance processes.
- Book project on ritualisation, hybrid justice and AI-supported governance.
Applications & context
Research-led training on procedural fairness, AI-supported mediation, complaint handling and effective remedy; institutional diagnostics for mediation providers, grievance mechanisms, integrity systems and organisations using AI-supported workflows. Recent development includes research at the Oxford Institute of Technology and Justice.
Doctoral research · January 2022–April 2026
Mediation as Court and Court as Mediation
A New Institutional Approach to the Right to a Fair Trial under Article 6 ECHR: Mediation as Court and Court as Mediation.
Core aims
To explain how the institutional integration of mediation reshapes the meaning of the right to a fair trial and identify the criteria used—and missing—when fairness is assessed in civil-justice systems combining adjudication and court-connected mediation.
Methods
Doctrinal analysis of ECtHR jurisprudence; comparative and historical socio-legal analysis across selected Council of Europe states; semi-structured elite interviews with ECtHR judges; thematic coding; and a seven-criteria institution-centred framework comparing adjudication, mediation and hybrid procedures.
Linked research
- Legal culture and judicial-system modernisation.
- Confidentiality and public hearing under Article 6 ECHR.
- Hybrid courts and judicial boundary work.
- Implicit legal culture through elite judicial interviews.
- Fair Trial Beyond the Courtroom monograph project.
Funding & contexts
Newcastle University; Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law; European Court of Human Rights. Linked support includes Max Planck Society Scholarship, Newcastle Doctoral College awards, ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, ECtHR traineeship funding, Northern Bridge Consortium and Law School PGR Conference funding.
Published strand · ADR and human rights
Human-Rights Limits in Mandatory Mediation
What guardrails make mandatory or court-connected mediation compatible with autonomy, access to court, procedural fairness and protection of vulnerable parties?
Core contribution
A normative framework for evaluating mandatory mediation architectures without treating consent as a binary formality. The work links institutional design, judicial roles, coercion, vulnerability and the evolving meaning of Article 6 ECHR.
Methods
Comparative doctrinal analysis of mediation architectures; normative legal analysis of autonomy, consent and coercion; and structured comparison of jurisdictional models and judicial roles in ADR.
Current · Higher education
Inclusive Dialogic Feedback and Scalable Assessment
How can feedback in mass postgraduate education scale without collapsing into mechanisation, exclusion or pedagogically thin assessment?
Core contribution
The project critically connects Assessment for Inclusion, Learning Analytics, Dialogic Feedback Pedagogy and Coaching Dialogue, developing an Inclusive Dialogic Feedback Model that combines dialogue, ethical depth and institutional scalability.
Outputs
A research article currently under review; a 2025 conference paper; and the SIMByte Teaching Moments video contribution for the Academy of Management Social Issues in Management Division.
Cross-cutting and interdisciplinary
Collaborative Research
Collaborative outputs extend the central programme into civil justice, international law, technology security, sustainability and environmental mediation.
Selected collaborations
- The Singapore Convention: Five Years On, with Bryan Clark.
- Future Resilience of the European Technology Security, with Miguel De Vera, Réka Koleszár and Giada Pasquettaz.
- Harnessing the Sun, with Ashish Saraswat and Garima Tiwari.
- Environmental mediation in legal education, with I. Kovalenko.
Collaboration interests
Comparative case studies, joint publications, grant applications, practitioner validation, institutional partnerships, workshops and research-led professional training.
Cross-project capabilities
Research methods & areas of contribution
Legal analysis
Doctrinal, comparative and normative legal analysis; ECtHR jurisprudence; international and human-rights law.
Socio-legal research
Elite interviews, focus groups, qualitative document analysis, thematic coding and mixed-methods research.
Institutional design
Procedural mapping, legal-culture analysis, stakeholder systems and rights-compatible diagnostic frameworks.
Data & dissemination
SPSS, Stata, NVivo/MAXQDA, dataset curation, policy briefs, training, accessible publishing and public engagement.
Architecture prepared; no empty tools published
Interactive research tools
Future tools may include a procedural-vitality diagnostic, mandatory-mediation safeguards assessment, Article 6 navigator, comparative mediation map and AI human-oversight checklist. Each will be linked to its methodology, limitations, citation and related research when ready.