Dr Sinéad Ring

    Law

    Lecturer

    New House
    209
    (01) 4747776

    Biography

    Sinéad joined the Department of Law at Maynooth in September 2019 from Kent Law School where she was a Senior Lecturer and Co-Director of Graduate Studies. She has also taught law at NUI Galway and University College Cork. She has held visiting positions at Osgoode Hall’s Institute for Feminist Legal Studies, Harvard Law School, Melbourne Law School and University of Technology, Sydney. Before entering academia Sinéad was a legal researcher at the Law Reform Commission. Sinéad is an expert in criminal law and evidence, victims’ studies and feminist legal studies. Her research explores legal responses to sexual violence.

    Sinéad is currently working on a monograph Legal Responses to Historical Child Sexual Abuse (forthcoming 2020 with Routledge).     

    Sinéad welcomes potential research students in sexual violence and the law; law and gender; feminist legal studies; criminal law; the law of evidence and criminal justice. 

    Sinéad is happy to answer media queries about criminal law, criminal justice and sexual violence. 

    Research Interests

    Sinéad’s research explores how law creates social, cultural and political meanings about historical child sexual abuse for victim-survivors, perpetrators, institutional actors, and society. Using insights from psychology, political theory and criminology, her work unpacks law’s discursive power (in civil and criminal law and in commissions of inquiry), and imagines better legal responses to historical child sexual abuse.  Sinéad’s research on historical child sexual abuse has been funded by the Irish Research Council and the Socio Legal Studies Association. She has published in numerous international journals including The International Journal of Evidence and Proof and Social and Legal Studiesand edited collections.  
    Sinéad is currently working on a monograph Legal Responses to Historical Child Sexual Abuse(forthcoming 2020 with Routledge) with Dr Kate Gleeson (Macquarie Law School) and Prof Kim Stevenson (Plymouth). This book examines the construction of child sexual abuse in the present by adopting a historiographic perspective exploring and comparing the responses of the law and legal institutions to historical child sexual abuse in Australia, Ireland and the UK.      
    Sinéad is also interested in legal responses to sexual violence against adults. The first strand of this work is around the role of law in the production of knowledge about sexual violence. She has published on the admission of counselling and therapeutic records in rape trials, and on the notion of consent to sexual intercourse in Irish law. The second strand of this work relates to the role of employment and anti-discrimination law in combatting sexual misconduct in higher education. At the University of Kent Sinéad was instrumental in the design of institution-wide policies on responding to and preventing sexual violence against students, and in successfully bidding for Higher Education Funding Council for England funds to support implementation of these polices. In November 2018 Sinéad was appointed by Minister for Higher Education Mary Mitchell O’Connor, T.D. to the Expert Advisory Group on Ending Sexual Violence and Harassment in Irish Higher Education Institutions. The group’s report, Safe, Respectful, Supportive and Positive. Ending Sexual Violence and Harassment in Irish Higher Education Institutionswas published in April 2019 and is available online here. The Report provides a framework for sectoral change to foster positive institutional cultures of respect, dignity and integrity that are effective in tackling sexual misconduct.  Sinéad is an editorial board member of feminists@law, an online open access journal of feminist legal scholarship (available online here).  

    Sinéad is happy to supervise research students working in the following areas: institutional violence and the State; sexual violence and the law; law and gender; feminist legal studies; criminal law; evidence law and criminal justice.       

    Research Projects

      Project Role Funding Body / Program Description Start Date End Date Award (€)
    The Prosecution of Historical Child Sexual Abuse in Ireland Lead Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences / IRCHSS / 48000

    Books

      Year Publication
    2020 Legal Responses to Historical Child Sexual Abuse.
    Sinéad Ring Kate Gleeson Kim Stevenson (2020) Legal Responses to Historical Child Sexual Abuse. London: Routledge. [Details]

    Peer Reviewed Journals

      Year Publication
    2017 'The Victim of Historical Child Sexual Abuse in the Irish Courts 1999–2006'
    Ring S. (2017) 'The Victim of Historical Child Sexual Abuse in the Irish Courts 1999–2006'. Social and Legal Studies, 26 (5):562-580 [DOI] [IR Link] [Details]
    2017 'Trauma and the construction of suffering in Irish historical child sexual abuse prosecutions'
    Ring S. (2017) 'Trauma and the construction of suffering in Irish historical child sexual abuse prosecutions'. International Journal For Crime, Justice And Social Democracy, 6 (3):88-103 [DOI] [IR Link] [Details]
    2015 '“Sexual Offence Complainants and Credibility: Why Virginity Testing is Pointless. R v L [2015] EWCA Crim 741.”'
    Sinead Ring (2015) '“Sexual Offence Complainants and Credibility: Why Virginity Testing is Pointless. R v L [2015] EWCA Crim 741.”'. Journal of Criminal Law, 79 (6):385-394 [DOI] [IR Link] [Details]
    2012 'Due Process and the Admission of Expert Evidence on Recovered Memory in Historic Child Sexual Abuse Cases: Lessons from America'
    Sinéad Ring (2012) 'Due Process and the Admission of Expert Evidence on Recovered Memory in Historic Child Sexual Abuse Cases: Lessons from America'. International Journal of Evidence and Proof, 16 (1):66-92 [DOI] [IR Link] [Details]
    2006 'Collateral Challenges to a Declaration of Unconstitutionality: A v Governor of Arbour Hill Prison [2006] IESC 45”'
    Sinéad Ring (2006) 'Collateral Challenges to a Declaration of Unconstitutionality: A v Governor of Arbour Hill Prison [2006] IESC 45”'. [IR Link] [Details]

    Book Chapters

      Year Publication
    2017 'DPP v C. Feminist Judgment'
    Sinéad Ring and Eilionoir Flynn (2017) 'DPP v C. Feminist Judgment' In: Enright, M, McCandless, J and O’Donoghue, A (eds). Northern/Irish Feminist Judgments. London: Bloomsbury. [Details]
    2018 '‘Our most precious possession of all.’ The Survivor of Historical Child Sexual Abuse as the Ideal Victim?”'
    Sinéad Ring (2018) '‘Our most precious possession of all.’ The Survivor of Historical Child Sexual Abuse as the Ideal Victim?”' In: Marian Duggan (eds). Revisiting the Ideal Victim Concept. Developments in Critical Victimology. Bristol: Bristol University Press. [Details]
    2018 'On ‘delay’ and ‘duration’. Law’s Temporal Orders in Historical Child Sexual Abuse Cases'
    Sinéad Ring (2018) 'On ‘delay’ and ‘duration’. Law’s Temporal Orders in Historical Child Sexual Abuse Cases' In: Sian Beynon-Jones and Emily Grabham (eds). Law and Time. London: Routledge. [Details]

    Honours and Awards

      Year Title Awarding Body
    2008 Scholar Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences

    Professional Associations

      Association Function From / To
    Socio Legal Studies Association Member /

    Committees

      Committee Function From / To
    Feminists at Law Journal Editorial Board Member 2013 /

    Outreach Activities

      Description

    In November 2018 Sinéad was appointed by Minister for Higher Education Mary Mitchell O’Connor, T.D. to the Expert Advisory Group on Ending Sexual Violence and Harassment in Irish Higher Education Institutions. The group’s report, Safe, Respectful, Supportive and Positive. Ending Sexual Violence and Harassment in Irish Higher Education Institutions was published in April 2019 and is available online. The Report provides a framework for sectoral change to foster positive institutional cultures of respect, dignity and integrity that are effective in tackling sexual misconduct. Link

    Reviews

      Journal Role
    Editor

    Teaching Interests

    Sinéad teaches Criminal Law and The Law of Evidence. 

    She is happy to supervise research students working in the following areas: institutional violence and the State; sexual violence and the law; law and gender; feminist legal studies; criminal law; evidence law and criminal justice.  

    External Collaborators

      Name Role / Description Country
    Mairead Enright co-author UNITED KINGDOM