Liam Thornton joins UCD School of Law
Liam Thornton has joined the UCD School of Law as a lecturer in law and director of clinical legal education. Before joining UCD, Dr Thornton was a lecturer in law in University of Ulster and before that he was the research and policy officer in the Irish Human Rights Commission. In the School of Law, Liam will continue to research in his areas of interest: immigration and asylum law, social security law and the governance of systems of social support. Liam will be teaching General Introduction to Legal Systems and the undergraduate and MCL property law courses. One of Liam’s main tasks will be to build upon successful clinical modules already operating in the School of Law, through a new placement module, Legal Practice II, in which students can be placed with leading legal practitioners, government agencies and civil society organisations.
Liam obtained a first class honours BCL (International) degree from the Faculty of Law in University College Cork. His PhD research was supervised by Professor Siobhán Mullally (UCC) and funded by the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences. It examined reception conditions for asylum seekers in Ireland and the United Kingdom and explored the legal and administrative measures utilised to exclude asylum seekers from mainstream social assistance systems. In 2012, Liam obtained a Postgrad Cert in Higher Education Practice from University of Ulster.
Further information on Liam’s research interests, publications, teaching and administrative responsibilities can be found here.
