Ms Allison Wolfreys

Lecturer In Law

allison.wolfreys@open.ac.uk

Biography

Professional biography

Professional Biography

Allison Wolfreys is a Lecturer in Law who studied Literature and Social Science at undergraduate level at the University of Manchester before qualifying as a Solicitor. She spent many years as a Family Law specialist then partner in a range of legal practices throughout the country. An experienced advocate and trained mediator, her practice included public and private law children matters, and international Family Law disputes. She was one ofthe first consultant peer reviewer in Family Law for the legal aid board assessing the quality of work by Solicitors across the country.

Her teaching career with the Open University began in 2007 when she became an Associate Lecturer and she gradually moved out of private practice to teach full time. She was appointed as a Senior Tutor ULaw's Exeter University in 2016. She has been a full time central academic within the Law School (FBL) since 2020 and is the current level 2 LLB lead and Co-Director of the Children's Research Centre (WELS). She also acted as an examiner in a variety of LLM subject areas and is the external examiner for Teesside University's LLM in legal practice.

Research interests

Allison's primary research interest area lies in Family Law and specifically international parental child abduction. She conducted the first empirical study that focuses solely on England and Wales that identifies through the experiences of practitioners including Cafcass staff, how children participate within these proceedings. She is particularly interested in how children as evolving citizens are excluded from the legal system and their rights and interests marginalised by decision makers.

Her secondary interest lies in using creative means to enrich the experience for students studying online. She has written and and presented on how to do this both internally and externally, for example, calling upon her experience of writing an audio drama to embed concepts of civil law and justice.

Teaching interests

Allison is the Module Team Chair of W230 Family Law, has taken the lead through the production of this module to its currently third presentation. She has held an HEA Fellowship since 2018. She has also authored content on criminal damage and political protest for W111 Criminal Law and the Courts and on gender and the law for W340 Law, Society and Culture She was project lead for W360 in the development of a training suite for students to develop their online mediation skills and presented a paper on this at the IJCLE conference in 2019.

She was invited as a guest speaker to the Resolution family law practitioners conference in 2017 and, having worked in the community as an independent domestic violence advisor, she also wrote and delivered a training module in family law for survivors of domestic abuse. Allison has presented to an international audience as part of the digital enhanced seminar series at the University of Kent.

A firm believer that research should impact teaching, her work on international child abduction and on the duties owed to unaccompanied asylum seeking children are incorporated into the teaching of W230 Family Law.

External collaborations

Allison initiated partnership working forming a collaborative arrangement with a firm of Family Law Solicitors who feature throughout the W230 module within each unit. Allison is a Member of the European Children's Rights Unit at the University of Liverpool School of Law and Social Justice. She is currently working with international Family Law practitioners in practice in the development of a webinar series. She has trained volunteers working for a charity supporing domestic abuse survivors. She has presented and trained social workers on her research findings contained within her report published on the Cafcass website.