About
Stephanie joined Southampton Law School as a Lecturer in Law in September 2019, and following promotion has - since March 2022 - been an Associate Professor at the Law School. Between 2015 and 2019, she was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law.
An EU and UK citizen, she is a graduate of the University of Glasgow (LL.B., First Class, 2009), the University of Edinburgh (LL.M., Distinction, 2010) and the European University Institute in Florence (Ph.D., 2014).
Stephanie is an EU law and policy expert with 10+ years working in legal and policy-led research positions, developing academic and consultancy projects, analysing information from a range of sources and making recommendations at levels of national and EU government. She has a broad expertise in EU law and fundamental rights, with more specific interests in data protection and consumer protection, digital policy, and international dispute resolution (and particularly the European Court of Justice).
Research
Research groups
Research interests
- European Union Law
- Consumer Protection
- Private International Law and European Civil Procedure
- Fundamental Rights
- Legal Theory and Methodology
Current research
Stephanie is currently engaged in research in the fields of European Union law, comparative and international dispute resolution (private international law and European civil procedure), data protection and digital policy, consumer law and fundamental rights. In recent years, she has been involved in undertaking legal and policy-orientated research in these fields for a number of organisations, national governments and international institutions.
In the field of private international law and civil procedure, she is currently involved in a multi-year project on comparative law and procedural justice, led by experts in civil procedure, organised by the Max Planck Institute for Procedural Law Luxembourg and funded by the National Research Fund of Luxembourg.
Stephanie has an extensive background in the field of consumer protection. She is a member of the UNCTAD Working Group on Consumer Protection in e-Commerce, and is currently engaged in a research project on the cross-border enforcement of consumer protection (https://www.crossborderenforcement.com), which – in identifying substantive and procedural obstacles to cross-border public and private enforcement, as well as best practices – aims to feed into the international work of the UNCTAD Working Group.
Previously, while working at the MPI Luxembourg, she coordinated a team of 30 researchers with Professor Burkhard Hess in researching and preparing a comparative and empirical study for the European Commission (JUST/2014/RCON/PR/CIVI/0082: An evaluation study of national procedural laws and practices in terms of their impact on the free circulation of judgments and on the equivalence and effectiveness of the procedural protection of consumers under EU consumer law). This was published in 2019 as B Hess and S Law (eds), Implementing EU Consumer Rights by National Procedural Law (Hart/Nomos/Beck; 2019).
Between 2019 and 2021, she led a comparative study for the Luxembourg Ministry of Consumer Protection on the enforcement of consumer law in six Member States in light of recent legislation adopted by the EU institutions; this study identified and evaluated procedural law obstacles and best practices in the public and private enforcement of consumer law, making proposals to the Ministry on the drafting of laws shaping regimes of enforcement and on the implementation of EU legislation in Luxembourg. This was published in 2021 as S Law and V Richard (eds), Public and Private Enforcement of Consumer Law – Insights for Luxembourg (Nomos/Hart/Beck; 2021).
In the field of data and consumer protection and artificial intelligence, she is currently involved in NoBias (https://nobias-project.eu/), a Marie Curie-funded Innovative Training Network, made up of eighteen beneficiaries and partners from across Europe, including universities, research institutions and industry bodies. It is an interdisciplinary project on bias in artificial intelligence-fuelled decision making which engages researchers from the fields of law, ethics, computer science and sociology.
She is also currently a member of the Academic Research Panel of Blackstone Chambers, London, of the Abusive Lending Working Group of the Open Society Foundation’s Justice Initiative, and of the UNCTAD Working Group on Consumers and e-Commerce.
Research projects
Completed projects
Publications
Teaching
Stephanie currently teaches in the fields of EU law, digital policy, data protection, and international dispute resolution.
External roles and responsibilities
Biography
Between 2015 and 2019, Stephanie was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law. Before joining the MPI Luxembourg, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law, McGill University, Montréal, a position for which she was granted funding from The Leverhulme Trust.
A UK and EU citizen, she is a graduate of the University of Glasgow (LL.B., First Class, 2009), the University of Edinburgh (LL.M., Distinction, 2010) and the European University Institute in Florence (Ph.D., 2014). She teaches in the fields of international adjudication and private international law, and is engaged in research, and has published widely, in EU law, private international law and civil procedure; she has a particular interest in fundamental rights protections of consumers, transnational private and public regulation, and legal theory. She has worked in these fields as a researcher for numerous organisations, national governments and international institutions, including the European Commission, the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of the Law and the Luxembourgish Ministry of Consumer Protection, amongst others.