Professor Tom Allen

Tom Allen is Professor of Law in Durham Law School.   He is originally from Canada, where he obtained a BA degree from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario in 1979 and an LLB from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1983.  After graduation from Dalhousie, he taught history, mathematics and science as a volunteer at a junior secondary school in Botswana.  In 1987, he returned to Canada and qualified as a solicitor and barrister, and practised for several years in the family law firm.  He then did an LLM at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, with a specialism in International Business Law.  In 1991, he began his academic career at Durham, as a teaching fellow and research assistant in the Department of Law.  He took up a lectureship at University of Newcastle in 1992 and returned to Durham as a senior lecturer in 1995.  He was promoted to Reader in 2000 and left for a Chair at Leeds University in 2001.  In 2003, he returned to Durham once again, as a Professor of Law.  He served as Head of the School from December 2007 to August 2010, having previously been the School's Deputy Head and its Director of Learning and Teaching. He has also held visiting posts at Cornell Law School, USA, and Stellenbosch University, in South Africa.  Tom will take up the post of Master of Grey College in October 2011. 

His research is primarily in the field of property as a human right.  He has published two monographs (The Right to Property in Commonwealth Constitutions and Property and the Human Rights Act) and numerous articles in the field in leading international journals. 

Tom joined Council as a new staff member in August 2011.