Toni Johnson

Lecturer
LLB (Hons)(Keele), LLM (British Columbia), PhD (Kent)

Email: toni.johnson@le.ac.uk
Telephone: 0116 252 2463

Toni joined the School of Law in September 2010.  She holds degrees from the University of Keele and the University of British Columbia, Canada.  She is in the final stages of completing her PhD from the University of Kent.

Toni’s current research project critically analyses the asylum and immigration system focusing specifically on the intersection of gender, sexuality and race.  Asking whether it is possible for asylum seekers to produce resistant narratives and through these narratives produce transgressive identities in a legal environment, and whether in so doing, they are able to challenge the formalism and formulism of the court.  She argues that whilst the spaces for transgression and resistance in court are limited, asylum seekers nonetheless challenge legal power structures in important and persistent ways. Drawing on Drucilla Cornell’s concept of the imaginary domain, the thesis reimagines the role of law and its relationship to the regulation of gender and sexuality as it pertains to sexuality and asylum and relies on Michel de Certeau’s conception of micro-resistance as a tool to analyse disruption of the formalism and formulism of the court space.

Research Interests

Law and political theory; feminist theory; regulation and social control; migration/asylum/family; law and development; privatisation; Gender/Sexuality/Critical Race theory; narrative; cultural theory.

Current Teaching

Undergraduate
Family Law
European Law

Postgraduate
Current Trends in International Law