Lydia Morgan

Dr Morgan was appointed as a Lecturer at Birmingham Law School in 2019.  Prior to that she was a Research Fellow on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation funded project Counter-Terrorism Review Joseph Rowntree (2017-2019) and a Teaching Fellow (2016-2017) at Birmingham Law School. She has previously taught at UEA (2015) and the University of Bristol (2013-2015).

Dr Morgan graduated with a First-Class degree in Philosophy and Cultural Studies from the University of Sussex in 2008 and went on to gain an MSc in Political Theory from the LSE (2010).  After a short period working in the Third Sector in youth development and homelessness, she returned to higher education to study for her PhD in Law and Politics at the University of Bristol.  As well as receiving her Doctorate in 2015, she undertook a 3-month ARHC Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, USA.

Dr Morgan’s research focuses on state power particularly in the arena of national security, counter-terrorism, surveillance, and intelligence. She analyses the intersection between public law, political theory, socio-legal thinking and critical consideration of liberalism. She has an enduring interest in state secrecy, the UK security services, the regulation of investigatory measures and the responses of liberal theory to contemporary political practices and is currently writing a monograph on the topic. She is also working on the conception of transparency in the Five Eyes intelligence sharing partnership.

Dr Morgan’s most recent publication, with Professor Fiona de Londras and Dr Jessie Blackbourn, Accountability and Review in the Counter-Terrorist State (Policy/ Bristol University Press, 2019) considered how the counter-terrorist state has become a normalised and permanent aspect in the UK and what a meaningful commitment to accountability should look like in that context.  Utilising empirical analysis of high-level interviews and in-depth examination of current laws and accountability practices, the book draws a detailed map of counter-terrorism review in the UK, analysing where it succeeds and fails.