Personal statement
Claire McDiarmid is the Head of the Law School, appointed to this role on 1st March 2019. She has been employed in the Law School since 1999 and was promoted to Professor in 2019. She specialises in Criminal law, with a particular interest in the law on Homicide. In this regard, she was seconded to the Scottish Law Commission from September to December 2019 to work on its project on possible reform of the Scots law of Homicide. Her other main research interest is in youth justice particularly in legal responses to children who commit serious crimes. She has written extensively on the age of criminal responsibility, the Scottish children’s hearings system, the child’s criminal capacity and children’s rights. She teaches Criminal Law at pass and honours levels and also offers a masters level class in Childhood and Crime.
She was the PI on a Scottish Government –funded project on the role of the safeguarder in the children’s hearings system (2017) and a Carnegie Trust-funded project on jointly reported children (2018).
She is a member of the AHRC’s Peer Review College and a peer reviewer for the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. She is the Chair of the Law Society of Scotland’s Board of Examiners and its examiner in Criminal Law. She is the lead on the Scottish Graduate School for the Arts and Humanities Law Catalyst which provides discipline-specific training to all Law PGR students in Scotland. She is the Assistant Editor of the Juridical Review and she was a member of the children’s panel for the city of Glasgow from 1996 until 2006.
Teaching
My main teaching interest is in Criminal Law which I have taught at all levels (pass degree; honours and masters). I have also recently created and developed an LLM/MSc module in Childhood and Crime. I have extensive experience of dissertation supervision at honours, masters and PhD level. In 2009, Claire received a teaching excellence certificate from the Strathclyde Students’ Union.
Research interests
My research interests are focussed in the areas of children who offend and in criminal law. I have worked extensively on the age of criminal responsibility and on aspects of the Scottish children’s hearings system. I have a particular interest in the criminal capacity of the child and in the difficulty for law in dealing with child-criminals – individuals who are, simultaneously, vulnerable and in need of protection as children and, also, offenders. The relationship between concepts of childhood and criminal law is also important in this context. I have a monograph in these areas: Childhood and Crime (Dundee University Press: 2007) and I have recently published a piece in a special edition of Youth Justice on the age of criminal responsibility.
In criminal law, I have a general interest in all areas of Scots Criminal Law with a focus on homicide. I have published on the partial defence of provocation and the mens rea of murder I am currently working on a second edition of Scots Criminal Law: A Critical Analysis (1st ed: Dundee University Press, 2009) with Professor Pamela Ferguson of the University of Dundee.
Professional activities
- contemporary childhoods conference: Scotland's Children: Possible Futures?
- Speaker
- 5/9/2014
- Central Law Training: The Criminal Law Conference
- Participant
- 16/6/2014
- Gerald Gordon Seminar on Crimina
- Invited speaker
- 12/6/2014
- Examiner in Scots Criminal Law
- External Examiner
- 1/1/2013
- Contingency in Practice: Applying a Threshold Concept in Law
- Speaker
- 2012
- External Examiner in Criminal Law
- External Examiner
- 1/10/2011
More professional activities
Projects
- Exploring Justice Inequalities and rights for children in conflict with the law
- Vaswani, Nina (Principal Investigator) Taylor, Yvette (Co-investigator) McDiarmid, Claire (Co-investigator) Donnelly, Michelle (Co-investigator) Mabon, Karyn (Post Grad Student)
- Scoping exercise, literature review and workshops exploring the evidence base and evidence gaps around children with protected characteristics in conflict with the law, and their experiences of justice.
- 01-Jan-2021 - 31-Jan-2021
- The Public Interest and the Child’s Best Interests: Jointly-Reported Children in Scotland
- McDiarmid, Claire (Principal Investigator) Donnelly, Michelle (Researcher)
- 01-Jan-2016 - 31-Jan-2018
- The role of Safeguarder in the Children's Hearings System
- McDiarmid, Claire (Principal Investigator) Barry, Monica (Co-investigator) Corson, Stephen (Co-investigator) Donnelly, Michelle (Researcher)
- 07-Jan-2016 - 31-Jan-2017
- AHRC - Doctoral Training Partnership Scotland | Gavin, Mhairi
- Piacentini, Laura (Principal Investigator) McDiarmid, Claire (Co-investigator) Gavin, Mhairi (Research Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2014 - 22-Jan-2018
More projects