Neil Harrison

Assistant Professor

Department: Northumbria Law School

I am an Assistant Professor in law and Solicitor at Northumbria University.

I teach on a wide range of courses on the LLB, MLaw and LLM programmes, including legal history, inquests, commercial contracts, contract law and the Student Law Office. I supervise legal history archives projects students.

My doctoral research is in legal history. In broad terms, the legal impact on business on Tyneside in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on the River Tyne. My research interests also include legal history, local legal history and history more broadly, law and society, legal education and procurement law amongst other areas. Further details are in my Research Interests

I was a commercial disputes lawyer at Bond Dickinson LLP and Square One Law LLP with over 22 years’ practical experience advising on a wide range of commercial disputes, risk assessment and mitigation strategies in the private and public sector, including the local government, education, health, transport, housing, energy, sports and manufacturing sectors.

As a solicitor my areas of expertise included commercial contractual disputes, all aspects of procurement law (as implemented in the UK) including procurement related disputes, PFI disputes, judicial review proceedings and public law disputes, commercial agent and distributor disputes, education related disputes and general contractual disputes.

I also have extensive experience of court and tribunal proceedings at various levels.

My first degree was in history at Jesus College, Cambridge.

I am Member of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the HEA.

Campus Address

Northumbria University School of Law, Room 350
City Campus East 1
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 8ST

Email Neil

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

My doctoral research is in legal history. In broad terms, the legal impact on business on Tyneside in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on the River Tyne, its management and ownership by an institution, the Tyne Improvement Commission. I examine the role of individuals, and the interaction between the institution and the individuals in the ownership and management of the River. I examine how the individuals interpreted, enacted, and enforced commercial and regulatory law in the context of the institution.

My research interests are in legal history, local legal history and history more broadly with a focus on the “long nineteenth century”. They include Chartism, radicalism, trade and business, newspapers and the press, biographical history, the role of networks in business, trade and commerce, ports and rivers, the interaction between commerce and culture, and crime and punishment.

My research interests also include law and society, legal education and procurement law.