David Mead

Academic qualifications:

BA (Cantab, 1985), LLM (UCL, Joseph Hume scholar 1996).

I qualified as a solicitor in 1993 but am now non-practising.

I was Director of Learning and Teaching in the Law School 2007-2014 (save for the year 2012/13). From 2001-2005 I was the senior adviser in the Law School, with oversight of pastoral care and academic support, and from 2005-2006 I was Director of Careers.

I graduated in 1988 from the University of Cambridge. I qualified as a solicitor and worked in the litigation department of a large city firm before deciding to pursue an academic career. After a LLM at UCL, and handful of years at London Guildhall University I took up a lectureship at UEA in 2001 where I remained for eleven years. I rejoined the Law School at UEA in June 2013, having been – for the academic year 2012/13 – Professor of Public Law and UK Human Rights at the University of Essex. My research primarily focuses on protest & public order, and British human rights law and my teaching is in the areas of UK Public Law, UK and European Human Rights Law and Legal Issues in Free Speech as part of the Media Law LLM. I was Parliamentary Academic Fellow to the Joint Committee on Human Rights at Westminster 2021-22. I lead the Law School's Social Justice research cluster, am co-lead on UEA's Democracy and Activism research grouping, and am UEA lead for the Eastern ARC "social justice and law" network. I have catholic interests outside research and teaching: football (playing, coaching and watching though I am as baffled by the continual under-performance of Derby County as I am by the vagaries of the HRA), cycling, comedy/humour (watching and writing), photography and gardening.

• 1996-2001 Lecturer and then senior lecturer at London Guildhall University   
• 1996-1998 Visiting lecturer, Kings College London
• 2001-2012 Lecturer, senior lecturer and professor, UEA Law School
• 2012-2013 Professor of Public Law and UK Human Rights, University of Essex
• 2013 -       Professor of UK Human Rights Law

My research largely falls into three areas: the regulation of protest and dissent, policing of protest, space and place for protest, and private law and protest; domestic human rights protection, under the Human Rights Act, and the constitutional implications of constitutionalising rights-claims; and policing and police powers, especially consensual exercises of power. My main research is in the area of peaceful protest and public order. In the 2025-2027 period I plan the following research outputs:

• Protest law under the Conservatives 2010-2024 for an edited collection on Human Rights under the Conservative Govts. from 2010.

• Criminal Defences for Protest Activists – Synthesising Strasbourg or Domestic Divergence on “reasonable excuses” and likely comparative law piece looking at how the criminal courts in Australia and NZ treat environmental protesters.

• Protest Places: the geo-legal regulation of place-terms in public order law. This is loosely based on the “spatial turn” in law i.e. the infusion of legal geography and so will be inter-disciplinary in outlook. It will plot how place/space inform what we protest about, when we might protest, and where we might protest but looks at such place-terms as "community" and "public place"
  
  I am also developing plans for a protest law networking event, and funding to match, and funding to test policing knowledge and understanding of protest law and powers, to mirror recent work on the public's knowledge.

David is willing to supervise students in the following areas:

• Protest, Public Order and Peaceful Assembly
• Direct Action
• British, UK and ECHR Human Rights law
• Human Rights Act
• Free Speech/Hate Speech
• Privacy
• Terrorism
• Police Powers
• Public Law

• I currently teach on two undergraduate modules, Constitutional and Administrative Law (1st year core module) and UK Human Rights Law (final year option). I also teach a module in the Media Law LLM, Issues in Free Speech. I have an interest in teaching (legal) skills within the curriculum.