Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Dr Jill Dickinson
Reader
Dr Jill Dickinson is a Reader of Law. A former solicitor specialising in commercial property, she is an SFHEA, and has been shortlisted for NTF. Her research explores place-making and professional development, and she has received an Emerald Literati Award.
As a solicitor, Jill worked for national and international law firms, and specialised in advising clients on the management of their retail portfolios. Supervising trainee solicitors and work placement students encouraged Jill's move into academia where she has undertaken roles including Research Supervisor, Course Leader, Module Leader, and Academic Advisor for both Law and Criminology, and Business and Management programmes.
Alongside her undergraduate teaching, Jill also enjoys her roles as Supervisor and Examiner for postgraduate research. While she is based in Law, she has additionally taught cross-institutionally for Real Estate, Engineering, and Business and Management teams. In terms of academic advising, Jill has achieved the Award in Personal Tutoring and Academic Advising from the Centre for Recording Achievement & Staff Educational Development Association, and has also become a recognised Practitioner in Advising with UK Advising and Tutoring. Jill's approach has been recognised through nominations for inspirational research supervisor, inspirational teaching, and outstanding student support awards.
Jill's external roles have included appointments as an external Examiner with Nottingham, Northumbria, and Coventry Law Schools, and Oxford Brookes University. As SFHEA, Jill was selected to review the Global Teaching Excellence Awards. She has also judged the Yorkshire Legal Awards and been recognised through the Law Works & Attorney General Pro Bono Awards, and institutional Team Awards; for example, for her involvement in the National Client Interviewing Competition.
Jill's approach to research has been recognised through the Emerald Literati Awards for Excellence, 2020. Jill is the School's Lead for Research Ethics, and her external research roles have included Associate Editor for the Journal of Property, Planning and Environmental Law, and Editorial Boards for Teaching in Higher Education: Critical Perspectives, the Journal of Place Management and Development, and the Journal of Law, Property, and Society. Jill sits on the International Oversight Board for the Horizons Institute, University of Leeds. She has also held roles as an Associate of the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research and as a Fellow of the Sheffield Institute for Policy Studies.
Jill enjoys leading collaborative initiatives around research, teaching and learning, and employability. Examples include: a new, university-wide Research Mentoring Framework; institutional involvement in the development of the Freshfields Stephen Lawrence Scholarship Scheme; a cross-university, interdisciplinary Higher Education Research and Practice Cluster; the Pracademia Network in collaboration with Advance HE Connect; and a UK and international, multimodal Symposia Series in collaboration with the Society of Research into Higher Education (involving 23 countries and 107 institutions). Jill is currently leading a professional development series around professional development for practitioners in academia, or pracademia, for the Committee of the Heads of University Law Schools (by invitation).
Current Teaching
Courses:
- Law
- Law with Criminology
Modules:
- Legal and Employability Skills
- Tort Law
Research Interests
Jill's dual, interdisciplinary research interests are in place-making and professional development. She enjoys using creative research methods, alongside traditional approaches, and examples include: artefacts, photo-elicitation, walking interviews, and time line mapping.
Place-making:
Jill's research explores some of the challenges that can face different types of spaces, and their stakeholders, and potential opportunities for addressing them. Jill has explored a range of types of places, including the home, greenspaces, and town and city centres.
Professional development:
As a former practitioner-turned-academic, Jill has developed a stream of research around pracademia, including an edited collection, involving 29 contributors from across the UK and internationally. Drawing on a combination of theoretical, empirical, and reflective approaches, the collection centres around three core themes of: pracademic identities, professional development, and teaching practice. She has been invited to present the work for organisations including the International Professional Development Association, and the Committee of University Heads of Law Schools. Other examples of Jill's research around professional development include an exploration of students' engagement with extra-curricular activities and the development of their self-efficacy.
Jill's current research examines user navigations of changing learning spaces, and the possibilities for the future of learning landscapes. She is also co-editing two special issues: one entitled 'Reimagining Higher Education Learning Spaces: Assembling Theory, Methods, and Practice' for the journal of Higher Education Research & Development, and the other entitled 'Stop, Collaborate and Listen: Moving beyond icebreakers in understanding Sense of Belonging in Law Schools' for The Law Teacher: The international journal of legal education.
Alongside her research, Jill enjoys supervising and examining postgraduate research projects. Example topics have included:
- Management of public spaces
- Professional identity
- Mentoring in law
- Developing students' commercial awareness
PhD Supervision
Jill welcomes prospective PhD students within the following areas of research:
- Land Law
- Tort Law
- Professional development and sense of belonging
- Law and place-making for example including greenspaces, built environment
- Legal Education
If you are a prospective student who would like to speak to Jill about PhD supervision, please contact Jill by email.
Ask Me About
- Business and management
- Employability
- Greenspaces
- Learning spaces
- Mentoring
- Space and place
- Architecture
- Business
- Community
- Education
- Ethics
- Governance
- Justice
- Law
- Outdoors
- Project management
- Property
- Retail
- Teaching
- Urban
- Wellbeing
