Meet the Research Team

Rosie

Hi. I’m Professor Rosie Harding, Chair in Law and Society at the University of Birmingham, and I have led the research projects which you can find out more about on this website. I’m interested in how law shapes people’s everyday lives. I’m especially interested in how law affects relationships, between family members, between friends and between professionals and ordinary people. I’m doing this research because I want to find ways to make the legal aspects of everyday life work better for people with disabilities, especially people who find it hard to make decisions about their lives because of intellectual disabilities, learning disabilities, brain injuries and dementia.

I have been working in universities since 2004. I completed an LLB (Hons) law degree at the University of Edinburgh (2000), an LLM masters degree in law at Keele University (2004), and a PhD in law at the University of Kent (2008). I also have a Postgraduate Certificate in higher education teaching (2009, Keele). I have worked at the University of Birmingham since 2012. I have written lots of academic articles and some books about how law shapes everyday life. You can find out more about my academic work on my university staff profile page.

Dhani

Dhanishka (Dhani) Seneviratne worked as a Research Associate with Rosie on the Co-Producing Accessible Legal Information project. Her interests lie in human rights and medical ethics, and she finds it exciting to look into the ways in which the law influences social inequalities.

Dhani completed her LLM at the University of Cambridge (2019), before joining the University of Birmingham for her PhD as an ESRC-funded scholar. She is a qualified Attorney-at-Law in Sri Lanka and the founder of a non-profit organisation called ‘The Special Project’, aimed at sharing the stories and experiences of people with disabilities.

Ezgi

Dr Esen Ezgi Tascioglu worked on the Everyday Decisions project with Rosie as a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. Ezgi has a keen interest in the role of law in deepening and alleviating social inequality. She finds it particularly exciting to look at this role of law in everyday life and even when nothing ‘legal’ seems to be happening.

Before joining Birmingham Law School, she received a BA in Cultural Studies at Sabanci University in Turkey (2008), an MA at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Spain (2010) and a PhD in Law and Society at the University of Milan in Italy (2016). Ezgi is now a Senior Lecturer in Law at Keele University.