Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé

With respect to research, Naomi’s principal research interests are in:

• International children’s rights law;
• International human rights law;
• Modern slavery and human trafficking.

Naomi the leading academic voice on children’s right to play, having published the first legal monograph on the right ‘The Right of the Child to Play: From Conception to Implementation’ with  in 2023. This monograph, hailed as ‘the most comprehensive and thoroughly researched study of a neglected but vital right’, and as ‘essential reading for anyone in law, public policy and decision making, anyone involved in the education of children or teachers, and all those whose decision making touches the lives of children’. Naomi’s work on the right to play, including her framework for implementing the right to play – space, time, acceptance, rights-informed (published in the  in 2025), has been used has informed the work of policy actors and civil society organisations throughout the UK and internationally, including the work of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Naomi was appointed as an expert commissioner to the Play Commission, conducting a national inquiry on play. Naomi’s work on the right to play has been used to inform teaching on the broader children’s rights framework including on children’s economic, social and cultural rights, the legal status of UN treaty body outputs, and methods for examining the scope and content of rights.

Naomi’s research seeks to push the boundaries of fields of study and innovate the methods and approach to studying human rights. In 2023, the ILO and IOM published findings from Naomi’s large-n systematic evidence review of literature at the intersection of children's rights and modern slavery. This found a significant dearth of meaningful engagement with both fields of study in the literature. The report calls for an expansion of such cross-field engagement in order to improve the possibility that modern slavery legislation, policies, programmes and practices are informed by the children’s rights framework and respect, protect and fulfil children’s rights. In 2024, Naomi led on a project that employed multi-modal methods with ~100 children in England, to explore children’s understandings of their right to play and the barriers and facilitators to enjoying this right. This research included map-making, photo voice, drawing, LEGO, interview and focus group methods, alongside a systemic evidence review of existing literature on barriers and facilitators of children’s play.

Naomi is currently leading a research agenda that aims to develop a theory of forgotten rights – exploring the mobilisation of rights across the human rights project. This research (a) identifies rights that have been overlooked by treaty bodies, states, legal scholars and advocates; (b) examines the treatment of Global South voices in the drafting, development, monitoring and implementation of rights; (c) explores the potential of forgotten rights to address social and political problems; and (d) innovates new methods for developing human rights normative content, measures of implementation and monitoring, from the ‘bottom-up’, with a glocal approach.

Naomi is also Honorary Lecturer at UCL where she leads a project funded by the UCL Grand Challenges fund on Barriers to International Climate Justice for Children, questioning whether the admissibility criteria designed for and by adults are appropriate for international law cases brought by children.

Naomi regularly peer reviews for leading journals across law, sociology and childhood studies, including for the International Journal of Children’s Rights, Human Rights Law Review, Childhood, and the International Journal of Play. Naomi has supervised undergraduate and postgraduate research – including doctoral research – at UCL and Oxford. Naomi has been co-convenor for the SLSA Annual Conference’s children’s rights stream since 2018, and is co-founder of the international Child Rights ERC Network, where we regularly offer structured writing sessions and peer support. Naomi also regularly offers seminars, workshops and webinar training for ECRs on grant writing and publishing from your PhD (BA ECR Network; Oxford). Naomi has successfully drawn down funding from a range of grants including internal (Nottingham, Oxford, UCL) and external (ESRC, ILO and IOM) opportunities.

With respect to teaching, Naomi has taught across numerous subjects in law and has particular interest in:

• international children’s rights law (Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé, UCL, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge and University of Nottingham)
• family law (Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé, UCL and University of Oxford)
• international human rights law (UCL and University of Nottingham)
• public international law (UCL and University of Oxford)

Alongside her teaching and research, Naomi is Deputy Director of Careers, with a focus on international career opportunities, and is an Academic Tutor.