Dr Claire Bessant

Associate Professor

School: Northumbria School of Law

Dr Claire Bessant is a socio-legal scholar and Associate Professor at Northumbria University. Claire is also currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies from October 2026-July 2027. Previously, in 2025 Claire was a Visiting Scholar at Emory Law School's Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative. She has been a Fellow at the civil society organisation CONNECTED by DATA since 2024. Claire is also Honorary Secretary and Trustee of the Socio-Legal Studies Association and a member of the Society of Legal Scholars.

Claire joined Northumbria University’s School of Law in 2002 having previously worked as a solicitor specialising in family law. She has since published in the fields of family law, privacy law, data protection, information sharing and human rights, and has contributed to government and parliamentary consultations, on both privacy and domestic abuse. At Northumbria, Claire leads Northumbria Law School's Rights and Social Justice Research Group. She is a member of and part of the management group of Northumbria's Gender, Violence and Abuse Interdisciplinary Research Theme.

Campus Address

Room 309, City Campus East

Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE1 8ST

Email Claire

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Claire is particularly interested in the impact of technology upon children's privacy. Claire's research on 'sharenting' (a term used when parents share information about their children online) and upon school online sharing of children's images has been published in English, European, and international peer-reviewed journals. Claire's earliest work on sharenting discussing the legal remedies afforded to children in England was published in Communications Law in 2018. During 2021-2 Claire worked with an international, interdisciplinary team of academics to develop further understanding of the sharenting phenomenon, the benefits that sharenting brings and the risks that it poses, with a view to identifying further avenues for research and developing policy recommendations: see “Sharenting in an Evolving Digital World: Increasing Online Connection and Consumer Vulnerability” In 2022 alongside Dr Maximillian Schnebbe Claire explored the application of the UKGDPR and EUGDPR to the phenomenon of sharenting in Datenschutz und Datensicherheit. In 2024 Claire's published the findings of her empirical research exploring education authority guidance on school social media use, identifying significant failures to recognise children's rights to be heard and suggesting how school practice and policies might be improved. In 2025 Claire was one of Emory Law School's Vulnerability and Human Condition Initiative Visiting Scholars. Her research applying Martha Albertson Fineman's Vulnerability Theory to sharenting was subsequently published in Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Sharenting: Parenting, Privacy, and Consent (Routledge, 2026). In 2026-7 as Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Claire will be undertaking a socio-legal research project investigating European data protection authorities' responses to sharenting.

Claire's research also explores how family privacy impacts upon the law in practice. Family privacy is here understood as an ideology which protects the family from the intervention of state and society and enables the family (notably parents) to take decisions about the family and children’s upbringing. Claire's doctoral thesis titled 'Parental Views about the Importance of Family Privacy and its Protection in English Law'used empirical methods to explore parents’ understanding of family privacy and the laws protecting such privacy. The thesis proposed a new framework for understanding the relationship between family, state and society and a new definition of family privacy which reflects both how parents understand the term and jurisprudential views on the family and how it should be protected from state and society. Claire's thesis findings have been published in abridged form in the leading family law journal Child and Family Law Quarterly ('Twenty-First Century Family Privacy' 2023 CFLQ 35(3) 251-274). Claire has a contract with Routledge for a monograph, Family Law, Privacy and Ideology, which will explore the application of this framework in practice, and consider how the law currently operates to protect the family's privacy from state, individuals and big tech. Claire's research on family privacy has been used to provide a new perspective to discussions regarding children's privacy, online harms, and the role parents and Government should play in protecting children from such harms (Parental approaches to protecting children from online harm: Trust, Protectionism or Dialogue? in Setty, Gordon and Nottingham, Children, Young People and Online Harms Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).

Alongside her research on privacy and technology, Claire maintains an interest in how the state protects vulnerable victims from domestic abuse, and in particular the role civil protection orders play in this regard. Her most recent research in this area discusses the Domestic Abuse Protection Notices and Orders which were introduced by the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. Claire has also undertaken empirical research alongside Dr Lauren Clayton-Helm exploring educators' understanding of the legal obligations imposed upon them where children are at risk of/have suffered female genital mutilation, using Uri Bronfenbrenner's work on the ecology of human development and socioecological systems theory as a lens through which to explore the state's role in protecting vulnerable family members.

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
An exploration of educators' understandings of their role in protecting girls from Female Genital Mutilation, Bessant, C., Clayton-Helm, L. 1 Mar 2026, In: Child and Family Law Quarterly
Female Genital Mutilation, Bessant, C., Clayton-Helm, L. 2 Feb 2026, Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Gender, Sexuality, and the Law, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar
Sharenting viewed through the lens of vulnerability theory, Bessant, C. 12 Jun 2026, Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Sharenting, London, Routledge
The Expanded Scope of the Tort of Misuse of Private Information: A Tort Protecting Individual and Family Privacy, Bessant, C. 2 Apr 2026, In: Journal of Media Law
Best practice for use of biometric recognition and facial recognition technology in schools and colleges, Bessant, C. 1 Dec 2025, In: Privacy & Data Protection
Data-Driven Decision-Making Beyond COVID-19: Incorporating the Voice of the Child, Bessant, C., Allsopp, R. 21 May 2024, Governance, democracy and ethics in crisis-decision-making, Manchester, Manchester University Press
Domestic Abuse Protection Orders: Will they provide more effective protection against domestic abuse?, Bessant, C. 22 May 2024, Law Commission Project Launch Event: Defences for victims of domestic abuse who kill their abusers
GDPR compliant school social media use — recommended guidance, Bessant, C. 2 Sep 2024
Gender Based Violence: Reflections on the World Envisaged in “After Dark” by Jayne Cowie: Using Literature to Critically Explore Current Legal Responses to GBV in the Home and in Public, Bessant, C., Richardson, K. 18 Jul 2024, In: International Journal of Gender, Sexuality and Law
International Perspectives – Dark patterns online – and the role of parents, Bessant, C., Ong, L. 20 Aug 2024

Current and Recent Projects

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Being Human Festival Event: Picture This - Marking 20 years of Facebook and 120 years of photography, Bessant, C. (Principal Investigator), Ray Windfarm Fund Community Interest Company, 01/07/24 - 01/12/24, £4,873.00
SLSA PGR Conference, Graham, L. (Principal Investigator), Bessant, C. (Co Investigator), Socio-Legal Studies Association, 01/07/23 - 30/06/24, £7,025.00
Investing in Children Longitudinal study, Bessant, C. (Principal Investigator), Investing in Children, 01/09/22 - 31/08/27, £8,480.00
Gender Based Violence: Reflections on the world envisaged in “After Dark” by Jayne Cowie, Bessant, C. (Principal Investigator), The Society of Legal Scholars, 01/08/22 - 31/08/22, £900.00
COVID-19: Observatory for Monitoring Data-Driven Approaches to COVID-19, Oswald, M. (Principal Investigator), Bessant, C. (Co Investigator), UK Research and Innovation, 04/11/20 - 03/11/21, £406,656.00
The Listening Fund, Bessant, C. (Principal Investigator), The Blagrave Trust, 01/04/18 - 31/03/19, £7,387.00

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Invited talk: Age Assurance: Addressing non-compliance, Circumvention, and Unintended Consequences 2025
Other: Fame Under Fire: Molly-Mae, Bambi and the "sharenting" grey zone 2025
Visiting an external academic institution: Emory University 2025
Other: Contribution in Digital Safety CIC September 2025 Newsletter 2025
Visiting an external academic institution: Curtin University 2025
Participating in a conference, workshop, ...: Design Lab: Supporting Collective School Decision-Making on AI and Edtech 2025
Other: Invited by Heather Toomey, Principal Cyber Specialist ICO to discuss my biometrics research and potential for future collaboration 2025
Invited talk: Parental consent and children's capacity - online and in schools 2025
Visiting an external academic institution: Digital Safety CIC 2025
Invited talk: Parental consent models and their impact on children's privacy, autonomy and best interests 2025

PGR Supervision

Caroline Hood EXPANDING EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING IN LAW - THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN APPRENTICESHIP PATHWAY TO QUALIFICATION AS A SOLICITOR. A CASE STUDY FROM NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY IN THE NORTH EAST OF ENGLAND. Start Date: 16/05/2019 End Date: 13/07/2025
Marianne Matthews GDPR’s storage limitation: a risk or an opportunity for marginalised data subjects in charity data controllers in Ireland? Start Date: 06/09/2022 End Date: 18/10/2025
Katie Schofield Glennon Start Date: 17/02/2026
Clare Redmond Sharenting: is a legal response needed in the United Kingdom (UK) and, if so, what form should this take? Start Date: 01/10/2023