Dr Caroline Derry

Professional biography

Caroline Derry joined the Open University in April 2017, teaching subjects including criminal and evidence law. She is Professor of Feminism, Law and History. Her other roles include Deputy Director Research Degrees.

Caroline qualified as a barrister, practising in criminal defence law, and as a solicitor in a large, central London legal aid practice. She then taught for fifteen years at London Metropolitan University, where she was a senior lecturer in criminal and evidence law and gender & law, and course leader for the LLB Law. She has been a visiting lecturer in criminal law at SOAS and at Paris Descartes (Masters in Common Law).

Caroline is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the HEA.

Research interests

Gender, sexuality and criminal law, particularly temporalities, the law on sexual consent, and the legal regulation of relationships between women from the seventeenth century to the present. Recent invited presentations include ‘Louise Mourey, the Labouchère amendment, and the non-criminalisation of sex between women’ (Oscar Wilde, Sexuality & the State, UCLA, 2024), '''Networks of influence, gender, class and lesbianism in Woods and Pirie v Cumming Gordon (1810-12)' (Alan Watson Legal History Seminar, Edinburgh University, 2023), and 'The Wolfenden Report, homosexuality, and women’ (The Neglected Decade: law in the 1950s, IALS, 2022).

Recent work on law and literature focuses upon lesbianism in Agatha Christie's novels and the criminal courts. It is being shared with academic and public audiences including as a speaker at the International Agatha Christie Festival and a guest on the Tea and Murder podcast. 

Early women lawyers: Caroline researches several of the first women to qualify as barristers in Britain (including those who practised in England and Wales as well as Malawi and Tanzania's first Black woman barrister). She has published and presented widely on these, and on feminist biographical methodologies, and is a participant in projects on the first women lawyers and early ethnic minority lawyers. Recent conference papers include ‘Understandings of women’s citizenship after the Representation of the People Act 1918: Ethel Bright Ashford’ (International Congress on Feminism, Law and Citizenship, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2022), ‘Olive Clapham and the complexities of “firsts”’ (keynote address, Diversity, Dilemmas and Discoveries, The Open University, 2021).

Caroline is academic lead of the Legal Histories research cluster, whose activities include the annual Diversity, Dilemmas and Discoveries conference series which attracts international participation. Themes have included women's entry into the legal profession, histories of legal education, legal history in the curriculum, legal histories/local histories, and legal history in unexpected places. She is co-editing a collection on Legal History in the Curriculum (Routledge, forthcoming). She also convenes the Society of Legal Scholars' Legal History Subject Section.

Teaching interests

• W111 Criminal law and the courts
• W250 Evidence law.
• W340 Law, society and culture
• Y035 Business and law Access
• LLM Law
• PhD research training seminars

Prior to working at the Open University, Caroline led a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules including:

• Criminal Law
• Evidence and Advocacy
• Gender and Law
• Gender and Human Rights
• Criminal Justice and Human Rights

She is the co-author of textbooks including Complete Criminal Law, 6th-8th editions (with Janet Loveless and Mischa Allen, OUP, 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2025 (forthcoming)) and Gender and Law (with Judith Bourne, Routledge, 2018).

Impact and engagement

Caroline has contributed to a range of consultations including the UK Government consultation on evidence in sexual offences, Scottish Goverment consultations on victims' rights and the not proven verdict, and the Criminal Law Reform Now Network project 'Reforming the Relationship between Sexual Consent, Deception and Mistake'.

She has published in the Law Society Gazette, The Conversation and OpenLearn, and contributed to exhibitions and events at the Inns of Court. Recent blog posts include:

• ‘Legal contributions to social history: when a dozen words make a difference‘, Journal of Law & Society Conversations (31 October 2022).
• ‘Early ethnic minority barristers & the Inns of Court’ with Miriam Mbah, Open Justice blog (Open University, 25 March 2022).
• ‘Covid-19, criminalisation and compliance: perspectives from health studies and law’ with Yolanda Eraso and Matthew Howard, SLSA Blog (9 December 2021).

Caroline's EDI work has been shared at conferences and events including the Association of Law Teachers' 2023 annual conference, AdvanceHE EDI Conference 2023, a Lincoln's Inn qualifying session on Gender Inequality and Intersectional Discrimination, and on OpenLearn, and in public talks for LGBT+ History Month. She is currently leading research on the experiences of Gypsy, Roma, Traveller, Showperson and Boater students in higher education distance learning.