Bethany is a senior lecture in law at Middlesex University and a qualified non-practising solicitor-advocate who before joining Middlesex was a judicial review lawyer at Public Interest Lawyers. She is completing her PhD at the University of Oxford on the right to freedom of thought under Article 9 ECHR.
Her specialism includes judicial review, the Human Rights Act 1998, the legacy of the Iraq litigation, and the use of data in political digital campaigns. She is Research Associate at the Information Law & Policy Centre, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and has held visiting positions at the University of Birmingham (2019), Queen’s University Belfast (2018), Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto (2018) and Centre for Human Rights in Practice, University of Warwick (2016-2017).
Qualifications
DPhil Candidate, Mansfield College, University of Oxford (expected completion 2025)
Qualified as a solicitor-advocate in 2015
Legal Practice Course
Graduate Diploma in Law
MA Art and Politics, Goldsmiths, University London
BA Art and Psychology (1st), University of Liverpool (Liverpool Hope University)
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Module Leadership: Public Law (core module for LLB/BA year 1); Solicitor Legal Knowledge and Solicitor Legal Skills (LLM (SQE Pathway)).
Teaching: Public Law
Link Tutor: LLM (SQE pathway)
Previous Teaching: English Legal System (Module Leader, LLB/BA year 1), Employment Law (Module Leader, LLB/BA year 3), English Criminal Law (Visiting Lecturer at the Université Catholique de Lille)
Follow @bethanyshiner14
Public law and Human Rights with a specific interest in the increasing challenge in holding the state to account particularly in the military realm; the Human Rights Act; the Right to Freedom of Thought; and, the impact of big data and algorithms on democratic processes.
Peer-review
The Cambridge Handbook on the Right to Freedom of Thought (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2024)
Co-edited Special Issue with Patrick O’Callaghan ‘The Right to Freedom of Thought: A Comparative Study’ [2021] 8(2-3) European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance 107-270
Published peer-reviewed articles
'The Right to Freedom of Thought: an Interdisciplinary Analysis of the UN Special Rapporteur’s Report on Freedom of Thought' with Patrick O’Callaghan, Olga Cronin, Brendan D. Kelly, Joel Walmsley and Simon McCarthy-Jones [2023] The International Jounral of Human Rights
‘Ministry of Defence Impunity: The Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021’ with Tanzil Chowdhury [2022] 2 Public Law 289-310
‘The Right to Freedom of Thought in the European Convention on Human Rights’ with Patrick O’Callaghan, [2021] 8(2-3) European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance 112-145
‘A Distinct Right to Freedom of Thought in South America: The Jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Neurotechnology and the application of Bioethics principles’ with Cláudio de Oliveira Santos Colnago, [2021] 8(2-3) European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance 245-270
‘Introduction to a Comparative Study of the Right to Freedom of Thought’ with Patrick O’Callaghan [2021] 8(2-3) European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance 107-111
‘Big data, small law: how gaps in regulation are affecting political campaigning methods’ [2019] 2 Public Law 361-378
Blog posts
'The freedom to think: stating the obvious?' MDX Minds, 27 July 2022
‘Mental Autonomy and Technology: A Cross-disciplinary Approach to Protecting Freedom of Thought and Opinion’ with Kate Jones, Oxford Human Rights Hub, 19 September 2021
‘A Comparative Study of The Right to Freedom of Thought in The Context of Emerging Technologies’ with Patrick O’Callaghan, British Association of Comparative Law, 23 July 2021
‘The Overseas Operation (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill and Impunity of the British State’ with Tanzil Chowdhury, UK Constitutional Law Association Blog, 22 September 2020
‘In conversation with: Bethany Shiner, Lecturer in Law, Middlesex University’, Information Law and Policy Centre, 2 July 2020
‘General election 2019: unregulated digital political advertisements are damaging our democracy’ Democratic Audit, 8 Nov 2019
‘Self-regulation is not enough: The law on micro-targeted online political campaigns and big data needs reform’, Democratic Audit, 4 Feb 2019
‘Voting away our rights’ with Dr Joelle Grogan, Lawyers for a People’s Vote, 13 December 2018
‘Integrity instead of deceit: how to improve the delivery and content of political campaigns’, LSE Brexit Blog, 18 July 2018
‘How Does the Data Protection Act 2018 Empower the Information Commissioner to Tackle the Misuse of Personal Data in Political Campaigns?’ UK Constitutional Law Association Blog, 20 July 2018
‘Just the Politics of Persuasion: Are Gaps in Regulation Affecting Political Campaigning Methods?’, UK Constitutional Law Association Blog, 1 Match 2018
O'Callaghan, Patrick and Cronin, Olga and Kelly, Brendan D. and Shiner, Bethany and Walmsley, Joel and McCarthy-Jones, Simon (2023) The right to freedom of thought: An interdisciplinary analysis of the UN Special Rapporteur’s Report on Freedom of Thought. The International Journal of Human Rights . ISSN 1364-2987 (Accepted/In press)
Shiner, Bethany and Chowdhury, Tanzil (2022) Ministry of Defence impunity: the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021. Public Law , 2022 (Apr). pp. 289-310. ISSN 0033-3565
O'Callaghan, Patrick and Shiner, Bethany (2021) The right to freedom of thought in the European Convention on Human Rights. European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance , 8 (2-3). pp. 112-145. ISSN 2213-4506
Colnago, Cláudio de Oliveira Santos and Shiner, Bethany (2021) A distinct right to freedom of thought in South America: the Jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Neurotechnology and the application of Bioethics principles. European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance , 8 (2-3). pp. 245-270. ISSN 2213-4506
Shiner, Bethany and O'Callaghan, Patrick (2021) Introduction to a comparative study of the right to freedom of thought. European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance , 8 (2-3). pp. 107-111. ISSN 2213-4506
Invited to participate in the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief consultation on the right to freedom of thought ahead of his report to the UN General Assembly, June 2021
Pro bono role as a stakeholder to the International Criminal Court’s preliminary examination into the Iraq/UK situation advocating on behalf of the Iraqi victims and providing factual and legal information which was essential to the OTP’s consideration of the situation, 2016 - 2021
Published written evidence to the House of Lords Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee, 29 October 2019 cited in its final report Digital Technology and the Resurrection of Trust, 29 June 2020
Oral and written expert evidence, APPG on Electoral Campaigning Transparency, cited throughout the APPG final report Defending our Democracy in the Digital Age, 20 January 2020
‘The legal landscape: Micro-targeted politics and big data’ in Electoral Reform Society Report ‘Reining in the Political ‘Wild West’: Campaign Rules for the 21st Century’, 4 Feb 2019 cited in the Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Committee’s Disinformation and ‘fake news’ final report
Published written evidence to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s Disinformation and ‘fake news’ inquiry, 31 October 2018
Consultation response to the Ministry of Defence’s Better Combat Compensation, February 2017 which was cited in Parliamentary Briefing Paper, ‘The Armed Forces Compensation Scheme’, 23 March 2017
