Professor M谩ir茅ad Enright

Birmingham Law School
Professor of Feminist Legal Studies
Head of Research Impact

Contact details

Telephone: (0)121 414 9518
Email: m.enright@bham.ac.uk
Twitter

Address: Birmingham Law School
University 麻豆精选
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Máiréad Enright’s research is in feminist legal studies and critical legal theory, with a particular focus on law and religion. She has written on issues including reproductive justice, law reform and grassroots organising, illegality in social movements, responses to historical injustice and obstetric violence. She often works with and advises groups campaigning around reproductive rights and historical gender-based violence, especially in Ireland and Northern Ireland. She is also interested in collaborations between artists and legal scholars. From 2020-2021, she was a Leverhulme Research Fellow. Her project, ‘Laws’ Inheritances’ examined how recent state efforts to redress institutional abuse in Ireland repeat or repurpose the legal structures that enabled the original abuse, and considers how that legal history could be inherited otherwise.

ORCID:

Qualifications

BCL (NUI)
MA (King’s College London)
Barrister-at-Law (King’s Inns)

Biography

I joined Birmingham Law School as a Senior Lecturer in September 2016, having previously lectured at Kent Law School. In 2020-2022, I held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. I tweet at .

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Teaching

Contract Law.
Family Law.

Postgraduate supervision

I am willing to supervise research students in the following areas:

Gender, law and Religion, particularly from feminist or critical legal perspectives.
Politics of reproductive justice.
'Historical' institutional abuse.
Law, activism and social movements.
I am happy to answer email queries from prospective students before submission of an official proposal.

Find out more - our PhD Law page has information about doctoral research at the University 麻豆精选.

Research

I have a range of research interests, grounded in feminist legal theory, and critical theoretical approaches to legal agency, legal pluralism, law-breaking, resistance and disobedience. My research to date has focused, in particular, on how women may strategically manipulate legal processes (contract formation, private law litigation, vernacular dissident legal interpretation and the feminist drafting of legal texts) to resist religious or cultural dispossession. A related strand of my research concerns states鈥� use of legal discourse to construct and maintain exclusionary politics of national identity, whether with or against religion. My research in this respect has involved close examination of the intersections of law, religious power and gendered national identity projects and the politics of reproductive justice in Ireland (particularly the early family planning movement, abortion rights and reparations for historical obstetric violence).听

Other activities

Legal consultant for artwork for (Dublin, 2016)

Mairead is a founding member of Lawyers for Choice, a public legal education group that aims to enhance understanding of abortion regulation in Ireland.

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Enright, M 2025, '', Direito Publico, vol. 21, no. 112, pp. 373-404.

Enright, M 2025, '', Contemporary British History, pp. 1-38. <>

O'Donoghue, A, O'Rourke, C & Enright, M 2025, '', International Journal of Constitutional Law.

Enright, M 2025, '', Law and History Review , pp. 1-25.

Enright, M 2024, '', Dublin University Law Journal, vol. 43, no. 2. <>

Enright, M 2023, '', European Human Rights Law Review, vol. 2023, no. 4, pp. 323-332.

Enright, M & Duffy, D 2022, '', Journal of Law and Society, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 753-777.

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Enright, M 2024, . in Research Handbook on Gender, Violence and Law. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.

Enright, M 2023, . in M Coen, K O'Donnell & M O'Rourke (eds), A Dublin Magdalene Laundry : Donnybrook and Church-State Power in Ireland. Bloomsbury, pp. 151-169. <>

Enright, M 2023, . in S Lenon & D Monk (eds), Inheritance Matters: Kinship, Property, Law. 1 edn, Bloomsbury Publishing. <>

Enright, M, Bloomer, F (ed.) & Campbell, E (ed.) 2022, . in F Bloomer & E Campbell (eds), Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland: Legislation and Protest. Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 101-115. <>

Chapter

Cloatre, E & Enright, M 2025, . in C Corcos (ed.), Law and Magic Volume II. Carolina Academic Press.

Enright, M 2025, . in C Harper (ed.), The Stained and Bloodied Cloths of Ireland. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Book/Film/Article review

Enright, M 2021, '', Social and Legal Studies.

Working paper

Enright, M 2023 ''.

Expertise

Mairead has expertise in abortion law, feminism in Ireland, historical injustice and reproductive justice.

Expertise

Feminist legal studies
Law and religion
Reproductive rights
Irish Studies