This Masters Degree programme aims to provide a practical and theoretical understanding of law and its relevance to issues around gender and sexuality. It combines analysis of current law with a critical exploration of the structures, potential and limits of law and legal reform. The course will engage with both current theoretical debates as well as assessing their place within the more grounded legal landscape. Thus, consideration of the legal system, for instance, will be both from the perspective of how individuals may attempt to seek redress or assert rights through various legal mechanisms, as well as assessing the more theoretical questions which may then arise from employing a legal or rights-based strategy.

Whilst these are the principal areas of study, the course will engage with dynamics of race, class, ethnicity and disabilityand their relevance to gender and sexuality discourses. An important sub-text to the course is human rights, both as a legal regime with specific application to gender and sexuality issues, and as a political sphere within which issues relating to gender and sexuality are negotiated. The LLM includes discussions of domestic, European and international developments.

The course aims to develop not only subject specific knowledge and skills, but also transferable skills (particular attention is paid to research and analytical ability). It will also provide a foundation for pursuing further study at doctoral level.