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Phone:: (023) 8059 3418
Email:: D.Gurnham@soton.ac.uk

Professor David Gurnham LLB (Lancaster), PhD (Warwick)

Professor of Criminal Law and Interdisciplinary Legal Studies

David Gurnham is a Professor of Criminal Law and Interdisciplinary Legal Studies within Southampton Law School at the University of Southampton. He came to Southampton as a Reader (Associate Professor) in 2012, having previously been a Lecturer in Healthcare Law and Ethics at the University of Manchester (2005 - 2012), and a Lecturer in Law at the University of Reading (2003 – 2005). His research and teaching reflect a primary interest in law in its contexts, and looks beyond law’s traditional boundaries in order to forge new critical and methodological possibilities.

Centre for Law, Policy and Society (CLPS)

Member

Health Ethics and Law (HEAL)

Associate Member

Research

Responsibilities

Publications

Teaching

Contact

Research interests

Criminal law
Law and Humanities
Critical and theoretical approaches to law (including psychoanalysis and feminism)

PhD supervision

I am in principle available to supervise on any topic within my research expertise. I have recently finished supervising Hector Olivas (with Mark Telford) on the legitimacy of prisons privatization in Mexico and the UK, James Thornton (with Mark Telford) on reforms to criminal procedure and fees structures in England and Wales, both of whom passed subject to modest corrections. I am currently supervising Ana Fuentes (with Harry Annison) on public bodies’ responses to human trafficking.

PhD research

PhD (Warwick) 2004: ‘Judicial Rhetoric and Ethical Dilemma: The Role of Liberal Principle in Legal Language’.

Research projects

Justice as escape: from metaphor to experience

Professor Gurnham's current law and humanities research focuses on contemporary 'contact points' between law's physical effects and the metaphors by which notions of justice and fairness are conceived, and explores issues arising from this. The research addresses this contact between the physical and the figurative as a question of theory and also in terms of its real impact in particular contexts and on particular communities. Publication is anticipated in 2021/2.

Law, policy and society at the margins

Professor Gurnham is editing a special issue the International Journal of Law in Context (2021) on how law does and ought to respond to people and communities who find themselves at or near the ‘margin’ of society and its concerns. The issue will engage an interdisciplinary readership of scholars and students who are interested in law and policy from doctrinal, socio-legal and criminological perspectives. It addresses concerns regarding how a focus on the contexts in which marginalisation occurs can better inform our understanding of law and the potential for research to impact upon society and communities.

Director of Research, School of Law
Editor in Chief (with Professor Gary Watt, Warwick Law School) of Law and Humanities (Taylor & Francis)
Member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the ‘International Journal of Law in Context’ (CUP)
Member of Centre for Law, Policy and Society (CLPS), and an Associate Member of Health Ethics and Law (HEAL).
Co-convenor: SLSA Law and Literature
Editorial Board member: Sexes (MDPI)

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Guest Co-Editor: New Criminal Law Review: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal

Edition: New Criminal Law Review: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol 17(1)
(Guest-edited with Imogen Jones)

Articles

Books

Gurnham, D. (2014). Crime, desire and law's unconscious: law, literature and culture. (a GlassHouse Book). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203797389
Gurnham, D. (2009). Memory, imagination, justice: intersections of law and literature. (Law, Justice and Power). Ashgate.

Book Chapters

Gurnham, D. (Accepted/In press). Walls and Bridges: Framing Lockdown through Metaphors of Imprisonment and Fantasies of Escape. In C. Stychin (Ed.), Law, Humanities and the COVID Crisis University of London.
Gurnham, D. (2021). Sentencing dangerous offenders in an era of predictive technologies: New skin, same old snake? In U. Kohl, & J. Eisler (Eds.), Data-Driven Personalisation in Markets, Politics and Law (pp. 142-156). University of Cambridge Press.
Gurnham, D., & Ashworth, A. (2015). Revisiting the criminalization of disease. In Pioneering Healthcare Law: Essays in Honour of Professor Margaret Brazier (pp. 268-279). (Bioethical Law and Ethics Library). Routledge.
Gurnham, D. (2013). Plato's fertility clinic: status and identity rhetoric in parenthood disputes. In M. D. Freeman, & F. Smith (Eds.), Law and Language (pp. 356-370). (Current Legal Issues; Vol. 15). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199673667.003.0191
Gurnham, D. (2012). Donor-conception as a 'dangerous supplement' to the nuclear family: what can we learn from parents' stories? In D. Cutas (Ed.), Families: Beyond the Nuclear Ideal (pp. 84-96). (Science, Ethics and Society). Bloomsbury Academic.
Gurnham, D. (2012). Risky sex and manly diversions: contours of consent in HIV-transmission and rough horseplay cases. In A. Alghrani, R. Bennett, & S. Ost (Eds.), The Criminal Law and Bioethical Conflict: Walking the Tightrope (Cambridge Bioethics and Law; Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press.

Letters/Editorials

Watt, G., & Gurnham, D. (2020). Law and Humanities issue 14.2. Law and Humanities, 14(2), 131-134. https://doi.org/10.1080/17521483.2020.1821989
Watt, G., & Gurnham, D. (2019). Law and humanities editorial 13.2 (winter 2019). Law and Humanities, 13(2), 143-147. https://doi.org/10.1080/17521483.2019.1676531

Working Papers

Co-module lead (with Mark Telford), and lecturer for Criminal Law (LAWS1020 and LAWS 2025).
Module convenor and teacher for all classes for ‘Violence and Sex in Law, Literature and Culture’ (LAWS3098)

Professor David Gurnham
Southampton Law School, Building 4 University of Southampton Highfield Southampton SO17 1BJ UK

Room Number : 4/3059

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