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Dr. Malvika Unnithan

Assistant Professor

School: Northumbria School of Law

Dr Malvika Unnithan is an Assistant Professor at Northumbria Law School. She currently teaches and supervises dissertations on the MLaw, LLB and LLM programmes. Before her appointment in this role, she was a Graduate Tutor at Northumbria Law School from 2015 during which she undertook her PhD part-time. She completed her PhD in 2022 on the role of school education in informing children about the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales. She conducted a case study in North-East England to investigate what children between the age of 7-14 are taught in schools about their responsibility as legal and moral agents, apropos of the Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility. She used qualitative research methods such as face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews and document analysis to gather her data. Her main research interests are Youth Justice issues, Children’s Rights, Legal Education for young children and Legal Research Methodology. She is on the editorial team for the Journal of Legal Research Methodology.

Malvika Unnithan

Campus Address

Northumbria University, Newcastle Business School
City Campus East
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 8ST

  • Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
  • ‘Children know right from wrong’ – an examination into the role of compulsory education in informing children about the Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility in England and Wales, Arthur, R., Unnithan, M. 12 Sep 2025, In: Child and Family Law Quarterly
  • Dialling in: Reflections on Telephone Interviews in light of the Covid-19 Pandemic, Unnithan, M. 17 Aug 2021, In: Journal of Legal Research Methodology
  • Integrating Sustainable Development and Children’s Rights: A Case Study on Wales, Croke, R., Dale, H., Dunhill, A., Roberts, A., Unnithan, M., Williams, J. 11 Mar 2021, In: Social Sciences

  • Law PhD October 27 2022
  • Law LLM January 16 2016
  • Law LLB (Hons) June 26 2013
  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy FHEA


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