Dr Emma Nottingham

Biography

Dr Emma Nottingham is a socio-legal scholar whose research reinvigorates and defines the field of legal archaeology. She developed a structured four-phase methodology for legal archaeology, and her work seeks to consolidate this as a rigorous, interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Her scholarship examines how legal rules, cases, and legislation emerge, evolve, and acquire authority over time, uncovering the historical, institutional, and narrative layers that shape legal doctrine.

Her research spans children’s rights, women’s legal history, healthcare, and criminal justice. She has applied legal archaeology to the case of Gillick and her forthcoming book Mothering Myths, Child Death Cases and the Law (Routledge 2027) explores how myths develop and persist within the criminal justice system, particularly in relation to women as partners and mothers. Her current work draws on archaeology and forensic methodology to develop legal archaeology as a tool for analysing wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice.

Alongside this, she has published on children’s rights in the digital world, examining how legal frameworks respond to emerging technological environments and the evolving autonomy and protection of children online. Her research combines doctrinal, historical, and socio-legal approaches, and she integrates these perspectives into research-led teaching and supervision.