Members

Dr Claire Fenton-Glynn - Director

Claire is a Professor in Child and Family Law in the Faculty of Law, and Fellow in Law at Jesus College, University of Cambridge.

Her research lies in the field of children’s rights, comparative law and international human rights law, and she has published on a wide range of issues including parenthood (especially international surrogacy), child trafficking and children and sustainable development.

Her first book, "Children's Rights in Intercountry Adoption" was awarded the Inner Temple Book Prize for New Authors, as well as the Faculty of Law's Yorke Prize, and has been cited by the Court of Appeal. Her second book, ‘Children and the European Court of Human Rights’ was published in January 2021 by OUP.

Claire is on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family. She is an Associate Member of Harcourt Chambers, and an Academic Fellow of Inner Temple, and has worked with organisations such as United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the European Union, Save the Children, and Avocats Sans Frontieres on issues concerning child protection, human rights, and rule of law.

Claire's full biography and list of publications are available on the Faculty website. 

She can be contacted on ces74@cam.ac.uk

Dr Brian Sloan - Deputy Director

Brian is an unestablished Assistant Professor in Property Law at the Faculty of Law and a Fellow of Robinson College. He has a wide range of interests within the broad field of family law, including on the topic of care. His first book, Informal Carers and Private Law, won the Faculty of Law's Yorke Prize, and he is the current author of Borkowski’s Law of Succession. He also writes on the regulation of adult relationships, the application of property law in the domestic sphere, the empowerment and protection of vulnerable adults, gender recognition and child law (including children's rights). Brian has a particular interest in adoption, and his work in the area has been cited with approval by the UK Supreme Court.

He has been an Early Career Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) in Cambridge, and held visiting positions at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, the University of New South Wales, Utrecht University, City University of Hong Kong and Pepperdine University, Malibu, California. His research has covered jurisdictions including England and Wales, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Scotland and Hong Kong SAR. He is a member of the Cambridge Reproduction SRI and of the International Advisory Board of FamRZ.

Brian's full biography and list of publications is available on the Faculty website.

He can be contacted on bds26@cam.ac.uk  

Dr Anna Heenan – Deputy Director

Anna is an Assistant Professor in Family Law in the Faculty of Law, and Fellow in Law at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge.

Her research focuses on the financial consequences of relationship breakdown. She has published on a range of family law issues and is co-author of the Family Law Concentrate revision guide published by OUP. Her current research looks at the financial arrangements reached by separating parents, and how these intersect with childcare responsibilities. As part of this work, she spent time as a visiting researcher at the University of Uppsala in Sweden.

Anna is a case notes editor for the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law. Anna was previously a solicitor in practice. She has advised on the operation of financial remedies law in England and Wales for the purposes of Canadian litigation.

She can be contacted on ach220@cam.ac.uk

Joanna Miles

Joanna is Emerita Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. She was Professor in Family Law & Policy at the University of Cambridge until October 2022 when she changed career into professional horticulture after over a quarter-century in the law.

During her academic career, she taught and researched in a wide range of domestic and comparative family law and family justice issues, in particular in the areas of adult family relationships, property and financial remedies. She worked for the Law Commission, and on Family Justice Council and Pension Advisory Group projects. She was also Academic Door Tenant at 1 Hare Court, Temple, London, from which she acted as an academic consultant in some key family law cases, notably for the wife's successful appeal in Wyatt v Vince [2015] UKSC 14 and for the husband’s successful defence in Owens v Owens [2018] UKSC 41.

She retains an active interest in family law (for a little while longer) as she pursues two projects in her “retirement”: the 5th edition of her textbook with Rob George (UCL) and Sharon Thompson (Cardiff), Family Law: Text, Cases, and Materials (OUP) due out in 2023, and a contribution to a new edited collection Politics, Policy and the Private Law (vol 1), edited by a team from Cambridge, forthcoming from Hart in 2023.

Her latest book, Fifty Years of the Divorce Reform Act 1969, with Daniel Monk (Birkbeck) and Rebecca Probert (Exeter) (eds) was published by Hart in 2022. You can refer to Joanna's full list of publications.

She can be contacted on jkm33@cam.ac.uk

Professor Jens M. Scherpe

Professor Jens Scherpe, founding Director of Cambridge Family Law, has left Cambridge and his position as Professor of Comparative Law at the Faculty of Law to take up a chair in Comparative Law at the University of Aalborg. There he also is the Director of the Nordic Centre for Comparative and International Family Law. He will remain connected to Cambridge Family Law as a member of the Management Committee and to Cambridge as an Emeritus Fellow of Gonville and Caius College.