Senior Lecturer features in BBC Radio 4 series

Senior Lecturer in Law, Dr Sharon Thompson, will feature in a new BBC Radio 4 series entitled The Battles That Won Our Freedoms.

The series tells the stories of battles in British history that helped to win liberties often taken for granted in British society, bringing together historians and people still engaged in those struggles today. Episodes cover issues such as freedom of religion, freedom of information, gay rights, freedom of the press and Catholic emancipation.

Dr Thompson features in episode eight of the series which is focused on the Married Women’s Property Act 1882. She meets Julie Arnold, to discuss how the outcome of Ms Arnold’s 2017 divorce case Sharp v Sharp was influenced by the doctrine of separate property in English law. Dr Thompson tells the story of Victorian women’s struggle to win wives a crucial freedom: the right to own their property after marriage.

This account of a nineteenth-century landmark is connected to her current Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) funded research on married women’s property in the twentieth century, which aims to take a socio-legal and historical approach to tell the untold story of the Married Women's Association and its campaigns for economic equality in marriage.

The episode will be broadcast on 16 January at 1.45pm and available thereafter on BBC Sounds.