Staff Profile
Robert Hargreaves
Lecturer in Law
I am a Lecturer in Law at York St John University, teaching across both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. My work is driven by an interest in how law is experienced in everyday life and how it can promote dignity, wellbeing and fairness.
My research is informed by therapeutic jurisprudence, exploring how legal processes affect people emotionally and socially across refugee integration, employment law, intellectual property and popular culture.
I also supervise in the York St John Law Clinic, where students advise real clients and develop professional judgment through structured reflection.
- School – York Business School
- Email – r.hargreaves@yorksj.ac.uk
- Phone – 01904 876 244
Further information
Teaching
I teach across undergraduate and postgraduate Law programmes, including Law and the State, Tort Law, Employment Law, and Employment Law and Practice. I also contribute to Clinical Legal Education and Professional Skills, where students advise real clients in the York St John Law Clinic.
My approach to teaching is student-centred and practice-focused. I use problem-based and scenario-driven learning to help students understand how law operates in real contexts and to build confidence in professional communication.
I supervise undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations in areas including employment law, equality law, intellectual property, sports law, media law, and the intersections of law, culture and technology. My goal is to help students connect academic research with the real-world impact of legal practice.
Research
My research explores how law interacts with emotion, culture and wellbeing, framed through the lens of therapeutic jurisprudence, an approach that examines how legal systems and processes affect people’s psychological and emotional experience. I am interested in how the law can promote dignity, autonomy and recognition, and in how it sometimes undermines these values.
My PhD, Refugee Integration in the UK: A Therapeutic Jurisprudence Approach, investigates how asylum and immigration frameworks shape belonging and well-being for those seeking refuge. Alongside this, I am developing research into employment law and workplace justice, exploring how a therapeutic jurisprudence perspective can illuminate the emotional consequences of dismissal disputes and contribute to more humane understandings of fairness.
Beyond these doctrinal areas, I study law’s emotional and cultural dimensions through analyses of Lionel Richie’s Hello, 13 Reasons Why and Ally McBeal, examining how popular culture reflects and reshapes ideas of justice, identity and voice. I am also developing new interdisciplinary projects on the therapeutic value of community and choral participation, exploring how collective creativity can foster connection and social inclusion.
I also collaborate with students to develop publishable work from their dissertations, helping them translate academic research into professional and scholarly outputs. Across all of my projects, I aim to connect legal doctrine with lived human experience and to reimagine law as a socially responsive and emotionally intelligent practice.
Publications
Books
- Hargreaves R, The Development of Minimum Wage Legislation in the United Kingdom (Austin Macauley, 2019).
Article/blog
- E-M Bartholomew (undergraduate dissertation, supervised and edited by R Hargreaves), ‘The Effect of the Employment Rights Bill 2024 on Zero-Hour Contracts’ (EmploymentBlawg, 2025)
Professional activities
I am a reviewer for the European Journal of Legal Studies, the International Journal of Clinical Legal Education, and the Entertainment and Sports Law Journal.
I am a member of the Society of Legal Scholars and the Association of Law Teachers, and an Affiliate Member of the Institute for Health and Care Improvement at York St John University.
Within the University, I sit on the Academic Conduct Committee (ACC) and the School Quality Panel (SQP), contributing to quality assurance and academic integrity. Externally, I serve as an External Examiner for the University of Greater Manchester (Bolton) and as the Chief External Examiner (LLM) at UWE Bristol.
