Associate Professor Graham Ferris has been teaching in higher education for over 20 years. A graduate of Nottingham University, he is a qualified solicitor and taught at Sheffield University and Sheffield Hallam University before he came to Nottingham Law School in 1999.
He has taught: Property Law; Legal History; Clinic; English Legal System; Banking and Restitution; Banking and Finance; Law of the World Trade Organisation; and Legal Theory. He has supervised many LLM dissertations and six PhD students to completion.
Recently he has developed an interest in legal education as a research topic and has given numerous conference papers, including one that was awarded the Stan March prize for best paper at the Association of Law Teachers Annual Conference 2014, and written several articles on the subject. His book The Uses of Values in Legal Education is an extended exploration of one aspect of legal education.
Graham is a Fellow of the HEA and has acted as the editor of the Policy and Educational developments section of the Law Teacher journal and was subject convener of the Practice, Profession and Ethics subject section of the Society of Legal Scholars 2017-2020. Some of his publications include:
FERRIS, G. and JOHNSON, N., Should lawyers acknowledge whom they represent in public discourse? (2017) 20(2) Legal Ethics 174
FERRIS G., ‘Values, Ethics and Legal Ethics, the QLD and LETR Recommendations 6, 7, 10, and 11’ (2014) 48 The Law Teacher 20.
FERRIS G. and JOHNSON N., ‘Practical Nous as the Aim of Legal Education’ (2013) 19 International Journal of Clinical Legal Education 271.
HUXLEY-BINNS R. and FERRIS G., ‘Putting Theory into Practice: Designing a Curriculum According to Self-Determination Theory’ (2013) 19 (3) The International Journal of Pedagogy and Curriculum 1
Graham has a strong interest in the links between identity and ethical character. His general approach might be summed up as the application of a theoretically informed approach to legal education. This interest informed his PhD by publication: What is Entailed by a Student-Centred approach to Legal Education?
In October 2019, Graham co-hosted a workshop of the Vulnerability and the Human Condition initiative at NTU on Vulnerability and the Organisation of Academic Labour.