Staff List
Prof Lorna Fox O'Mahony, LLB, PhD, PGCHET
(email at lorna.fox@durham.ac.uk)
Biography
Lorna Fox O’Mahony is Professor of Law at Durham Law School. Lorna’s research interests are strongly oriented around social analyses of property law, applying policy-oriented, socio-legal and theoretical perspectives to a range of property issues. Recent projects have included the role of cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research into home meanings for creditor possession actions, feminist perspectives on the meaning of home, social and moral aspects of legal regulation of unlawful occupation, and the role of the legal concept of home in analysing law’s responses to the use of home equity by elderly homeowners and other financial transactions affecting the owned home. Lorna’s work on the development of a legal concept of home has had a major impact on the emergence of legal scholarship in this area. Her book, ‘Conceptualising Home: Theories, Laws and Policies’ (2006, Hart Publishing), which applies an inter-disciplinary socio-legal analysis to re-consider law’s response to disputes between secured creditors and the occupiers of domestic property in the contexts of repossession, foreclosure and bankruptcy, was awarded First Prize in the Society of Legal Scholars’ Birks Prizes for Outstanding Legal Scholarship (2007), and was short-listed for the Socio-Legal Studies Association Book Prize (2008). Current projects include analysis of home equity use by elder homeowners; social and contextual analyses of legal regulation of credit and debt; and a study into squatting which analyses the limits of legal regulation in governing the relationships between unlawful occupation, land use strategies, and land titling systems (with Professor Rob Home). Lorna is Associate Editor-in-Chief of the International Encyclopaedia of Housing and Home (Elsevier Publishing, forthcoming). Lorna has been a visiting scholar at Cornell Law School, Cornell University, USA, the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, UK, and Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
Teaching Areas
Land law
Trusts and Equity
Research Interests
- Socio-legal analysis of property law
- Legal concept of home
- Squatters and adverse possession
- Trusts of the family home
- Law and the emotions
- Creditor possession actions
Selected Publications
Books: authored
- Fox, Lorna. 2007. Conceptualising Home: Theories, Laws and Policies. Oxford.: Hart Publishing. (Additional information) (View publication online)
Essays in edited volumes
- Fox O’Mahony, Lorna. 2008. ‘Repossessing “Home” A Re-Analysis of Gender, Homeownership and Debtor Default for Feminist Legal Theory’. In 'Women and the Law'. Thomson/West. (Additional information)
Journal papers: academic
- Fox, Lorna 2008. Re-possessing ‘Home’ A re-analysis of Gender, Home Ownership and Debtor Default for Feminist Legal Theory. Journal of Women and the Law 14(1). (Additional information) (View publication online)
- Devenney, James , Fox, Lorna & Kenny, Mel 2008. Standing surety in England and Wales: the sphinx of procedural protection. Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly 394-416. (Additional information)
- Fox O’Mahony, Lorna. & Cobb, Neil. 2008. Taxonomies of Squatting: Unlawful Occupation in a New Legal Order. Modern Law Review (Additional information)
- Cobb, Neil. & Fox, Lorna. 2007. Living outside the system: the (im)morality of urban squatting after the Land Registration Act 2002. Legal Studies 27(2): 236-260. (Additional information) (View publication online)
- Fox, Lorna. 2006. Property Rights of Cohabitees: The Limits of Legislative Reform. Irish Journal of Family Law 2-9. (Additional information)
- Fox, Lorna. 2005. Creditors and the concept of 'family home': a functional analysis. Legal Studies 25(2): 201-227. (Additional information) (View publication online)
- Fox, Lorna. 2005. The Idea of Home in Law. Home Cultures 2(1): 25-49. (Additional information)
- Fox, Lorna. 2003. Reforming Family Property: Comparisons, Compromises and Common Dimensions. Child and Family Law Quarterly 15(1): 1-20. (Additional information) (View publication online)
- Fox, Lorna. 2003. Reforming Family Property: Comparisons, Compromises and Common Dimensions. Child and Family Law Quarterly 15(1): 1-20. (Additional information)
- Fox, Lorna. 2002. Charity Law in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly 53: 347-350. (Additional information)
- Fox, Lorna. 2002. Creditors and the Family Home: Three Perspectives on Family Property Policy. Irish Journal of Family Law 3-8. (Additional information)
- Fox, Lorna. 2002. The Meaning of Home: A Chimerical Concept or a Legal Challenge? Journal of Law and Society 29(4): 580-610. (Additional information) (View publication online)