Rebecca’s research interests lie within the field of public law. She has a special interest in the history of public law, and in particular the extent to which governance of the British Empire affected the development of core public law principles in Britain. Her doctoral thesis was titled “Empire and Emergency: Reverberations of the British Empire in the Authorisation of Internment under the Defence of the Realm Acts”. It considered the impact of British imperial governance practices on the introduction of a First World War regulation that authorised internment of (inter alia) British subjects. She is also interested in contemporary constitutional, administrative, and human rights law, particularly in the context of emergencies. She worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Law at King’s College London from 2022-23 on a global project mapping legal responses to Covid-19. Her research in this project related to the impact of Covid-19 on the right to protest.
In her role as Parry-Anderson Fellow and College Associate Professor at Downing, she supervises Constitutional Law and Human Rights Law.