Dr Jennifer Sigafoos DPhil (Oxon), JD, MSc

My socio-legal research concerns access to justice. Since 2019, together with James Organ from Law and Sophie Wickham from the Institute for Population Health Science, I have been working on a project funded by Liverpool City Council to understand the functioning of the remaining advice resources in the city. Together with our partner organisation, Citizens Advice Liverpool, we also have developed an e-referral tool for sending confidential referrals between agencies to try to prevent referral fatigue. In addition, we have started the Liverpool Access to Advice Network (LATAN), a community of practice for organisations that provide and link to advice across the city. More information about the project, including research reports, can be found at: Increasing Access to Justice in Liverpool Project Page. We have used the data arising from this project, and an earlier project for the EHRC, to evaluate health justice.

This project won the inaugural Socio-legal Studies Association Impact Prize in 2023.

In 2018, James Organ and I were commissioned by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to conduct a large scale empirical study of the impact of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 on access to justice in the areas of family law, welfare rights and employment. Our research report was published by the EHRC at: EHRC LASPO Report. This research formed part of the Charity Law and Policy Unit Impact Case Study submitted to REF2021. We have used this data to consider the implications for citizenship in subsequent publications.

The other major strand to my research concerns charity/ non-profit organisation law and policy. My publications have addressed the impact of non-discrimination law, such as the Equality Act 2010, on charities. Many charities discriminate by limiting their services to only some beneficiaries, defined by a protected characteristic, such as race or religion. In some instances this is lawful and in some it is not. My socio-legal research has assessed the sector's understanding of these limitations, as well as considered where the limit should be between lawful/unlawful discrimination. My currrent project is analysing recent Statutory Inquiries by the Charity Commission to see what we can learn about how the Commission is regulating the sector from these (often high profile) cases of possible wrongdoing by charities.