Dr Sarah Woodhouse BA, DPhil

Personal Statement

Dr Sarah Woodhouse is an in-house solicitor and primarily teaches in the Liverpool Law Clinic, specialising in immigration, asylum and human rights.
She was head of the Immigration Department at Birnberg Peirce and Partners, a leading law firm specialising in civil liberties and human rights. She conducted many cases in the higher courts, including the leading case on the relevance of refusal to perform military service in asylum cases [Sepet & Bulbul v SSHD [2003] UKHL 15] and complex national security cases in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. She was listed as a leading practitioner in the field of immigration and asylum in Chambers and Partners, which acclaimed her as the "best of her generation" of immigration solicitors. She has also worked at both the Terrence Higgins Trust and The Rights Partnership in Birmingham as a specialist immigration solicitor.
Her career has also included working with refugees in Croatia in a local NGO (1993), and as Certification Monitor, a statutory post reporting to Parliament on the operation of the Non-Suspensive Appeals system, which prevents some asylum seekers appealing in-country (2004-06).
She has a DPhil from the University of Oxford which she undertook at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies (1991-5).