Dr Rhonda Wheate

Senior Knowledge Exchange Fellow

Law

Personal statement

Dr Rhonda Wheate has dual qualifications in Science (University Medal for chemistry, Hons Class I) and Law (Hons Class I). Building upon this, Rhonda's PhD research examined how well real juries in criminal trials comprehend scientific evidence. Her later research has focused on expert evidence; forensic science; judicial, legal & juror comprehension; and more recently, on Clinical Legal Education. Rhonda is the Director of the Clinical LLB at the Law School, as well as supervising Hons, Masters and PhD students in areas related to the above research.

Publications

Why do judges keep letting bad science into criminal trials?
Wheate Rhonda
(2021)
'Life experience' and juror bias in criminal trials
Wheate Rhonda
(2021)
The Young grandfather : a new approach to the reliability of expert evidence in Scottish criminal cases or business as usual?
Nicolson Donald, Wheate Rhonda
Juridical Review Vol 2020, pp. 111-152 (2020)
The importance of DNA evidence to juries in criminal trials
Wheate Rhonda
International Journal of Evidence and Proof Vol 14, pp. 129–145 (2010)
https://doi.org/10.1350/ijep.2010.14.2.348
A tale of two approaches - the NAS report and the Law Commission consultation paper on forensic science
Wheate Rhonda M, Jamieson Allan
International Commentary on Evidence Vol 7 (2009)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1554-4567.1110
Australian forensic scientists : a view from the witness box
Wheate Rhonda
Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences Vol 40, pp. 123-146 (2008)
https://doi.org/10.1080/00450610802452228

More publications

Professional activities

BBC Scotland Radio Sunday Morning Interview: George Floyd & Jury Selection
Interviewee
14/2/2021
Law and Society Association (External organisation)
Member
2021
Network for the Public Communication of Science and Technology (External organisation)
Member
2021
Socio-Legal Studies Association (External organisation)
Member
2021
Society of Legal Scholars Annual conference 2020
Speaker
2/9/2020
PhD Examiner - The Regulation of DNA Collection and Retention for use in Criminal Investigations in Kuwait
Examiner
8/2020

More professional activities

Projects

EO4HR: Earth Observation for Human Rights
Riccardi, Annalisa (Principal Investigator) Wheate, Rhonda (Co-investigator)
01-Jan-2022 - 31-Jan-2026
Honour-Based Abuse in Scotland: Evidence and pathways to strengthen protection for victims
Wheate, Rhonda (Principal Investigator) McLaughlin, Elaine (Co-investigator) McGowan, Mhairi (Co-investigator) Faulds, Samantha (Co-investigator) Burton, Allan (Co-investigator)
Funded (£17,918) by the Scottish Universities Insight Institute (£16,418), Strathclyde Law School (£1,000) and Hemat Gryffe Women's Aid (£500). A series of multi-agency, multi-disciplinary events providing a forum for the analysis of current legal and policy frameworks in Scotland concerning Honour Based Abuse (HBA).
The project and events will consider the protection provided to victims of gender-based HBA through the law and policing. The project will illuminate and evaluate the effect of the law and policing on women who are impacted by the intersecting factors of gender, ethnicity, family networks, linguistic, financial, educational, immigration and other barriers in the face of HBA, creating recommendations for law reform, policy reform, and an animation to be played by Police Scotland in airport and immigration venues in relation to HBA.
01-Jan-2022 - 30-Jan-2022
Honour-Based Abuse in Scotland: Giving Women a Voice
Wheate, Rhonda (Principal Investigator) McLaughlin, Elaine (Co-investigator) McGowan, Mhairi (Co-investigator) Faulds, Samantha (Co-investigator) Burton, Allan (Co-investigator)
£5000 HaSS Knowledge Exchange Small Grant to support the translation of high-quality research into knowledge exchange activities and outputs, and develop research networks and future research applications from existing knowledge exchange projects.
01-Jan-2022 - 31-Jan-2022
Literature Review of the sentencing of cases involving domestic abuse
Wheate, Rhonda (Principal Investigator)
Report for the Scottish Sentencing Council, in collaboration with Glasgow University Law School (£8,175.44)
26-Jan-2021 - 30-Jan-2022
Goffman meets Popper in the Criminal Courts
Wheate, Rhonda (Principal Investigator)
HaSS COVID-19 Student Project Fund awarded to supervise a research assistant student (Calum Harris) for 10 hours research on Erving Goffman's "Frame Analysis" and Karl Popper's "Scientific Method", building a multi-disciplinary literature database to interrogate why sub-standard scientific evidence (forensic science) is permitted in criminal trials in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and NZ.
19-Jan-2020 - 19-Jan-2021
Thai Judiciary Visit 2019
Wheate, Rhonda (Principal Investigator)
I provided a seminar in Criminal Law and Jury Trials to 35 senior members of the Thai judiciary, who were visiting Strathclyde for an academic programme on Scots Law.
14-Jan-2019 - 27-Jan-2019

More projects