Professor Peter Edge

LLB, PhD (Cantab), SFHEA, FRSA.

Professor of Law

School of Law and Social Sciences

Peter Edge

Role

Peter completed his PhD, on Manx Public Law, at Wolfson College Cambridge in 1994, and began his academic career at Lancashire Law School, developing a further specialism in the interaction of law and religion. He was appointed Reader in Law and Religion at Oxford Brookes in 1999, and Professor of Law in 2003.

He has held grants to support his research and teaching from the ESRC, the AHRC, JISC, HEIF, the HEA, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, and Culture Vannin. He has acted as external examiner at undergraduate or PhD level for Cardiff University, City University of Hong Kong, Durham University, King's College London, University of Kwazulu-Natal, University of Oxford, Newcastle University and the  University of Western Australia.His research students have gone on to academia, private practice, government service, and politics.

He is a member of the Advisory Committee on Conscientious Objection, which advises the Secretary of State for Defence; and the Council of Minister's Emergency Advisory Group, which advises the Manx government on emergency situations, currently the coronavirus pandemic.

Teaching and supervision

Courses

Modules taught

  • Inequality, Diversity and Human Rights
  • Advanced Legal Research Methods

Peter's main contribution to the undergraduate programme is his distance learning module Religion and Law in the 21st Century. He also supervises undergraduate dissertations.

At master's level, his main contribution is to the LLM in Legal Practice. Peter was one of the validating team for the LLM, and has taught on it since its inception. He leads the distance learning skills module. He supervises a wide range of topics at this level, including topics with a religious element (such as Shariah projects), and work on any small jurisdiction with a common-law inheritance. He also teaches on the LLM in International Law programme, co-teaching Inequality, Diversity, and Human Rights with Professor Lucy Vickers.

At research degree level, Peter primarily supervises in the area of law and religion. Past projects have, for instance, included religious terrorism, the right to life under ECHR and Shariah law, the identity of Arab Muslim Women, sacred sites, and religion and crime. He also supervises on the law of small jurisdictions, for instance on the role of the Privy Council in the Commonwealth Caribbean. He particularly welcomes PhD applications in the area of the interaction between commercial and religious activity, definitional issues around religion and/or belief, and the constitutional law of the Crown Dependencies. 

Supervision

I am an experienced supervisor of projects at LLM, MPhil and PhD level, with more than twenty completions. I am particularly keen to supervise projects in the fields of law and religion, and the public law of small democracies, and am happy to discuss such projects before formal application to Brookes.

Recent supervisees include:

Research Students

Name Thesis title Completed
Nick Brown Why does family law treat FGM and male circumcision differently? Active
Richard Fretwell Religious Freedom in a Post-Christian Age: A critical analysis of liberalism, secularism and human rights through the lens of religious freedom in education in England Active
Stephen Hurley The protection of non-religious philosophical belief in the British workplace Active
Sarah Slator Politics in the Courtroom: International Communism, the Global Anti-Apartheid Movement and the Rivonia Trial in South Africa 1963–64 Active
Craig Allen How should improper religious impulsion be regulated by the law of England and Wales? 2021
Duygu Yardımcı Cooperation Between Public Authorities and Civil Society: Forms, Drivers, Principles, Policies, Means and Tools 2021
Dr Sarah Hayes The extent to which public engagement by the religious precinct destabilises religious autonomy 2019

Research

Professor Peter Edge has two principal research interests.

Firstly, the law of small jurisdictions with a common law inheritance, particularly the Isle of Man. His doctoral work at Cambridge University concentrated on the public law of the Isle of Man, including both constitutional and criminal law, and his publications in the area seek to show how the study of Manx law can illuminate issues of broader scholarly concern (for instance, in a study of the Manx Tynwald aimed at informing reforms to the UK House of Lords), and contribute to comparative study across small democracies.

Secondly, the interaction of law and religion within the English jurisdiction, but also in transnational law. He is a founder member of LARSN (the Law and Religion Scholars Network), and convenes the annual LARSN PhD Conference at Brookes. His current research focus is on the interaction of the commercial and the religious in law - Commercial Religion.

Peter is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, and an External Fellow at the University of Queensland Centre for Public, International and Comparative law. He was awarded the UCM Honorary Fellowship 2020 for his work with Tynwald and in Manx HE.

Research group membership

  • International and Comparative Law Group (Law)
  • FRED: Fundamental Rights, Equality and Diversity (Law)

Centres and institutes

Groups

Projects

Projects as Principal Investigator, or Lead Academic if project is led by another Institution

  • Women in Manx Politics (01/01/2022 - 30/09/2023), funded by: Manx Heritage Foundation (trading as Culture Vannin), funding amount received by Brookes: £5,898

Publications

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Professional information

Memberships of professional bodies

He is a member of the Advisory Committee on Conscientious Objection, which advises the Secretary of State for Defence. More information is available here.

He is also a the Council of Minister's Emergency Advisory Group, which provides rapid advice to the Manx government on emergencies, including the current coronavirus pandemic. More information, including the minutes of the EAG, is available here.

Conferences

I actively participate in international and national conferences in my fields. Key conference contributions include:

  • “The relationship between state and sub-state Parliaments in the Commonwealth: The Manx Experience”, Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, December 2021.
  • “The Manx General Elections of 2021”, #UCMTAlks, UCM Seminar Series, December 2021.
  • “Nationalising a national emergency: The Manx Experience of the 2020 Pandemic”, HSS Coronavirus Seminar Series, July 2020.
  • “Crown Dependency Parliaments”, Study of Parliaments Group Virtual Seminar Series, May 2020.
  • “Legislative/Executive relationships in small democracies”, UCM Lecture Series, University College of the Isle of Man, May 2019 (with de Than).

Consultancy

  • Review of the interpretation and effectiveness of equality and human rights law relating to religion or belief, EHRC, 2014-2015 (with Vickers and Manfredi).
  • EHRC Report 97: Review of equality and human rights law relating to religion or belief, (2015) http://tinyurl.com/nah4ldh (with Vickers).

Further details

Peter also blogs, primarily on Manx law issues, at: https://edgelawblog.wordpress.com/