Dr Beth Kamunge-Kpodo

I am an early career socio-legal researcher with growing expertise at the intersection of feminist philosophies of law, public health law, international human rights law and international environmental law. My previous research has focussed on Black feminist approaches to food justice and the Human Rights to food, health and adequate standard of living. I have been invited to speak, and/or written about, the utility of strategic litigation and legal mobilisation; food and environmental sustainability and justice; epistemic injustice and the decolonisation of knowledge production; African women’s land rights; racialised health inequities and legal determinants of health; and Black feminisms. My research is necessarily interdisciplinary, drawing from concepts and theories in feminist philosophy, critical human geography and sociology.

I read Law (LL.B with Honours) at the University of Sheffield, where I also undertook an LL.M in Public International Law (Human Rights Pathway). I attended Bar School in Nairobi, Kenya where I was also called to the Kenyan Bar as an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya (currently non-practicing). Prior to my PhD, also at the University of Sheffield, I gained 5 years experience of public interest/strategic litigation and legal advocacy particularly against development-forced displacement of Indigenous communities for the purposes of natural resource extraction. It is here that my interests in law and social movements/ law and social justice developed. I joined the University of Leicester in September 2023, from the University of Reading where I was a Lecturer in Law and the Deputy Director of the Law, Justice and Society Research cluster at the Law school.

I primarily engage in empirical, socio-legal research. My research is emancipatory and seeks to centre the perspectives and lived experiences of marginalised and underserved groups. I have a keen interest in black women’s lived experiences of food poverty, health and environmental inequalities and harms, and the (in)effectiveness and  of the law in bringing about social change. During the COVID-19 pandemic I was a Senior Research Assistant in the Centre for Health Law and Society, at the University of Bristol’s School of Law. There I worked with Prof John Coggon on a £1.4 million UKRI funded collaborative research project between the Universities of Oxford, Bristol, Edinburgh, University College London, and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, in the Public Health and Health Inequalities workstream. I have extensive experience of public engagement in various contexts within and beyond academia, including disseminating research on the ethics of racialised public health inequalities in a forum in Westminster (May 2022).

• John Coggon, Beth Kamunge-Kpodo, The legal determinants of health (in)justice, Medical Law Review, Volume 30, Issue 4, Autumn 2022, Pages 705-723.https://doi.org/10.1093/medlaw/fwac050
• Kamunge, B (2022). Place and health inequalities: An ethical framework for developing and evaluating policy. UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator. Available online
• Kamunge, B. (2021b) Intersectional approaches to tackling pandemic inequalities. UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator. Available online
• Kamunge, B. (2021a) Response to ‘An Equal Recovery’ Inquiry by the Treasury Committee, UK Parliament. Report submission number AER0039. Available online
• Johnson, A., Joseph-Salisbury, R., & Kamunge, B. (Eds.) (2018). The Fire Now: anti-racist scholarship in times of explicit racial violence. London: Zed Books.
• Kamunge, B. (2018). Intersectional approaches to food and gender politics in Kenya. Cha Kula, Route to Food: Nairobi. Available online (pp.16-20)
• Kamunge, B., Joseph-Salisbury, R., & Johnson, A. (2018). Changing our fates in The Fire Now. In A. Johnson, R. Joseph-Salisbury, & B. Kamunge (Eds.), The Fire Now: Anti-racist scholarship in times of explicit racial violence. London: Zed Books. (pp. 1-12)
• Kamunge, B. Mwangi, W. and Ali, O. (2018). Writing in the Fire Now: Beth dialogues with Wambui and Osop in A. Johnson, R. Joseph-Salisbury, & B. Kamunge (Eds.), The Fire Now: Anti-racist scholarship in times of explicit racial violence. London, UK: Zed Books (pp.189-197).

I welcome proposals in the following areas:

• Feminist approaches to Public Health Law and Human Rights
• Law and Race
• Law and social change/ social movements
• Black feminist legal theory
• Sociolegal empirical research

• Constitutional and Administrative Law (LW1120)
• Land Law (LW2390)

• food and environmental justice;
• racialised health inequalities;
• black women’s lived experiences of law and social injustice.