Neil Robinson is Appointed visiting Professor By Staffordshire University - November 2012

Neil Robinson is the latest Visiting Professor to be appointed to the faculty of Business, Education and Law at Staffordshire University. Professor Robinson is a leading family mediator, consultant and trainer, Director of The Mediation Centre in Stafford and Consultant to Nowell Meller Solicitors and a Mental Health Judge. As a family lawyer, he has long been committed both to public funding (he was Legal Aid Family Lawyer of the Year 2007) and to the co-operative resolution of family conflicts.

Professor Robinson says, “the honour in being appointed Visiting Professor is, I believe, a recognition that mediation and peaceful dispute resolution have moved centre stage after eight hundred years of an adversarial family justice process. Staffordshire University’s Law School, especially through the lead taken by Prof Chris Barton and Dr Sue Jenkinson in inaugurating its Annual family law conferences, is pre-eminent in exploring the links between family social policy and the law. I see this award as an opportunity to strengthen together the links between the worlds of the academic and of the practitioner.

This award is extraordinarily timely, as this Government – whether for pragmatic or ethical reasons – is moving very rapidly towards a relocation of family conflict resolution within the world of social welfare rather than court-based justice. The challenge for both academics and practitioners is for that sea change to be accompanied by the highest ethical and intellectual standards. If we want estranged family members to learn to work together before they learn to fight, one place to start that “re-education” is in our Law Schools. I look forward to starting this journey together.”

For more about Staffordshire University law School, visit: www.staffs.ac.uk/faculties/law/