Dr Samantha Morgan-Williams BCL (Law & German) (2012), LLM (2013) PGCert (2019) PhD (2021), PGDip (2022) MA TLHE (2023) is a graduate of University College Cork. She joined the School of Law as a Lecturer in 2022 having completed her postdoc at the Traveller Equality & Justice Project, Centre for Criminal Justice & Human Rights, UCC. The TEJP, which Samantha founded during her PhD, was awarded an IRC New Foundations Award 2018-2019 and a Rights Equality and Citizenship Award by the European Commission in 2020 ( REC Award 2021-2023) to establish a legal clinic for Traveller victims of discrimination (goods & services). The TEJP Clinic supported 84 Traveller clients over 14 months of operation. The TEJP was also awarded an action grant from the Council of Europe's Roma and Traveller Unit to provide legal education directly to the Traveller Community. Samantha and the TEJP team received a 'President's Award for Excellence in Teaching' (Team Award) 2022 for their work with the TEJP Clinic.

Samantha's research interests lie within European human rights, access to justice and rights specifically to how minoritised or othered communities access and engage with their human rights through traditional means of legal redress (civil). Her work has been funded by the Council of Europe, European Commission, Irish Research Council, the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (SATLHE) and the UNIC Early Researcher Seed Fund. 

Samantha's research works across multidisciplinary themes but can broadly be defined as a human rights profile with a focus on how individuals interact with legal actors in order to address human rights violations. With particular focus on how minoritised, othered and unheard communities engage with and access justice, whether this is through non-discrimination, cultural or housing rights redress avenues.  She is also interested in how courts perform their duties in times of crisis and how courts respond to external pressures such as political backlash within their jurisprudence. Her PhD focused on the 'interpretive ethic' of the European Court of Human Rights, exploring how this adapted within austerity-based 'crisis law' jurisprudence as an example of judicial deferrence. 

Ancillary to her human rights work, Samantha also holds a PGCert, PGDip and MA in Teaching & Learning in Higher Education and has a strong interest in current deficits in third-level Irish legal pedagogy– specifically the need for enhanced experiential learning opportunities and development of “live client” approaches to clinical level education in Ireland.  

Samantha has experience teaching within criminology, criminal law, human rights and introductory law modules.

Her specific teaching interests lie within human rights law, access to justice, ECHR, criminal law and housing law.

She is currently Director of the LLM International Human Rights and Public Policy.

Undergraduate:

LW1104 Foundations of the Legal System

LW1153 Criminal Law

LW2007 Law of Evidence II

LW3376 Traveller Equality & Justice Project Clinic

LW3377 Courtroom Ethnography: Theory and Practice

Postgraduate:

LW6606 International Human Rights Law

LW6648 Human Rights Law in Practice