Hutchinson, KC, Anne-Marie
Anne-Marie Hutchinson OBE, KC (Hon) is a partner at Dawson Cornwell, one of the UK's leading family law firms. She is consistently named as one of the leading family lawyers in London in both Chambers
and The Legal 500, and is singled out as a 'star individual'. Anne-Marie specialises in all aspects of domestic and international family law and the international movement of children. She has expertise in divorce and jurisdictional disputes, with particular expertise in international custody disputes, child abduction (Hague and non-Hague) and the EU Regulation on jurisdiction in family matters. She was awarded the inaugural UNICEF Child Rights Lawyer Award in 1999. She received an OBE for her services to international child abduction and adoption in 2002. She was selected as Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year in 2004; received the International Bar Association Outstanding International Woman Lawyer Award in 2010; was presented with the Jordans International Family Lawyer of the Year Award in 2012; and was awarded the prestigious International Academy of Family Lawyers President's Medal in 2014. Anne-Marie was appointed Queen's Counsel honoris causa in 2016 and received an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Leeds the same year. Anne-Marie is chair of the Board of Trustees of Reunite.
Saunders, Lesley
Lesley Saunders PhD, FMCA is a family mediator, PPC, trainer and competence assessor. From an early background in social policy research and curriculum development, Lesley retrained in the 1990s in counselling, with a focus on children and young people, and also in mediation. Initially working in the community on neighbour disputes, Lesley extended her skills to encompass workplace, small claims and special educational needs mediation, as well as being a mediator and PPC with the Disability Conciliation Service. Lesley trained as a family mediator in 2002 and qualified in 2004. Since then, she has focused almost entirely on family mediation - mediating, qualifying as a PPC in 2010, working with NFM and now independently as a trainer, and with the FMC as an assessor of mediator competence. Alongside this, Lesley has been involved at a national level variously as a board member of the College of Mediators, on the Professional Practice Committee of NFM, with the FMC on Stan Lester's work on the development of the standards framework and currently on the PPC panel of the FMSB.
O'Shea, Roisin
Roisin O'Shea is an award-winning former Irish Research Council scholar and mediator, who was awarded a PhD in 2014 for her doctoral research in family law. She is a partner in Arc Mediation and has significant experience as a family mediator, completing hundreds of cases since 2009. She has been a board member of the Mediators Institute of Ireland since 2015 and a member of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts International Committee headed up by Teresa Williams of CAFCASS. Roisin is the Principal Investigator for WIT's Family Mediation Project and is also carrying out empirical research attending family law sittings with ministerial consent in the District Court in Ireland. Roisin was a keynote speaker in February 2018, speaking on 'Modern families, modern family justice', a St George's House European Consultation at Windsor Castle. Later that year she was invited by the Legal Aid Board to join the working group for the establishment of the Mediation Council of Ireland. In March 2019 she was invited as a family law and mediation expert to attend a meeting of the Joint Committee on Justice and Equality, and to make a submission and present her views on the topic of 'Reform of the Family Law System', including the use of mediation. In May 2019 she was also appointed as an external independent evaluator for the revalidation of a Certificate in Mediation by Griffith College Dublin.
Hall Dick, Anne
Anne Hall Dick was a family lawyer for 42 years before her retirement from practice in 2017. She was accredited by the Law Society of Scotland as a Family Law Specialist. Anne was founding Chair of the Family Law Association in 1989. She was the first mediator to be accredited by the Law Society of Scotland, in 1993. She was the first Convenor of CALM, the association of accredited family mediators in Scotland. Anne is an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and was a founder member of the Family Law Arbitration Group (Scotland) in 2010. Anne is one of the original four founder members of the Scottish Collaborative Family Law Group (now Consensus) who trained in London in collaborative practice in 2004. Anne annotates The Family Law (Scotland) Act 1985 for W Green and also jointly wrote The Art of Family Law and The Science of Family Law and Child Centred Legal Practice for the same publishers. Anne was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Law Awards in Edinburgh in 2017. Anne's focus is now on writing, training and mediation, which she offers through Inkdance
Family Mediation.
Whatling, Tony
Tony Whatling MSc, CQSW, MCOM has a background in social work practice, (child care, adult mental health and family therapy), team management and education. He has over 30 years' experience as a mediator, PPC and self-employed trainer. He has trained hundreds of mediators throughout the UK in family, community, health care complaints, victim offender and workplace mediation contexts. Over a period of ten years, he designed and delivered training to some 1,300 Muslim family mediators in India, Pakistan, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Syria, Afghanistan, Portugal, the UK, the USA and Canada. He has presented papers and workshops at several international conferences, published some 40 articles on mediation practice, and was a founder member and former elected governor of the College of Mediators. His book Mediation Skills and Strategies - A Practical Guide (2012) has sold over 3,000 copies worldwide and is also published in Spanish. He is currently working on his next book.
Barlow, Anne
Anne Barlow FAcSS is Professor of Family Law and Policy at the University of Exeter. She specialises in family law and policy research, and has published widely in the field. Between 2011 and 2014, she led the three-year interdisciplinary study Mapping Paths to Family Justice, looking at out-of-court dispute resolution of private family law issues, which was funded by the Economic Social and Research Council (ESRC). She also led a follow-on impact study, Creating Paths to Family Justice (2015-19), where she and the Mapping Paths research team worked with a number of agencies - including OnePlusOne, Relate, the Ministry of Justice, the Family Mediation Council (FMC), Resolution and the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS) - to draw on research findings to develop online and offline mediation services for separating couples and children. Anne was appointed as the Academic Member of the Family Justice Council from 2011-15 and in 2014 she served as a member of the government's Task Force on Family Mediation. Her book, Mapping Paths to Family Justice: Resolving Family Disputes in Neoliberal Times (Palgrave, 2017), co-authored with the Mapping Paths research team (Rosemary Hunter, Janet Smithson and Jan Ewing), also won the Hart-Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) book prize in 2018.
Moscati, Maria Federica
Dr Maria Federica Moscati is Reader in Law and Society at the University of Sussex, where she was previously a Senior Lecturer in Family Law. She is an Italian advocate and trained mediator and holds a PhD from SOAS. Before undertaking her doctorate she worked for Save the Children Italy where she specialised in children's rights. Her main research interests lie in issues relating to ADR, access to justice, comparative family law, human rights with a focus on children, and LGBTIQ+ people. She is co-director of the Centre for Cultures of Reproduction, Technology and Health, and joint editor of Mediation Theory and Practice. Maria combines research with activism in support of LGBTIQ+ people.
Webley, Lisa
Lisa Webley is Chair in Legal Education and Research and Head of Birmingham Law School at the University of Birmingham. She is also Head of Research at the Centre for Professional Legal Education and Research at Birmingham Law School and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London. She is Chair of the International Working Group for the Comparative Study of the Legal Professions and is General Editor of the journal Legal Ethics. Her research spans legal education, legal ethics, the legal profession, dispute resolution, lawtech and access to justice, including family justice.
Sims, Andrew
Andrew Sims is an independent mediator, trainer and consultant.
He studied social psychology at university and comes from a business background. Andrew is an accredited family mediator (FMCA), a PPC and a registered civil and commercial mediator, and mediates with a range of practices in London and the South-East. He specialises in mediating high-conflict disputes in a variety of fields, including family, civil and commercial, inter-generational, community, workplace and employment mediation. Andrew held the post of Service Manager at the South-East London Family Mediation Bureau from 2016-19 and prior to this acted as a Mediation Development Consultant to an independent homeless charity, advising its specialist mediation team.He has been a Trustee with Southwark Mediation Centre for eight years. During this period, he worked as a coach for Talking Works in Schools and as an Assessor to the Peer Mediation Training programme at Bacon's College, London. In 2016 he was invited to speak about the value of peer mediation to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on ADR. Andrew is a member of the College of Mediators' Professional Standards Committee.
Stylianou, Katherine
Katherine Stylianou is a Senior Lecturer at London South Bank University (LSBU) and has been a practising mediator since 1995, gaining her accreditation in 1998. She has had 21 years of experience in developing and delivering undergraduate and postgraduate modules in ADR and mediation at LSBU. The other institutions for which Katherine has worked include Birkbeck, University of London (external examiner and guest lecturer on the MSc Conflict Studies and Mediation course) and Westminster University (wrote and delivered a course on family mediation on the LLM Dispute Resolution course). Katherine has been a fellow of the Higher Education Academy since 2005, when she also obtained a Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. She originally
trained as a barrister in 1987, working at the Family and Criminal Bar before taking up her position at LSBU in 1991. Katherine has been an assessor and trainer for Lorraine Bramwell Associates since 2013 and a PCC/supervisor to family mediators since 2015. From 2012 to December 2016, she served on the College of Mediators' Professional Standards Committee, before which she was an elected Governor of the UK College of Family Mediators. She continues to be involved as an adviser to the College of Mediators.
Robinson, Neil
Neil Robinson is a foundation trainer for the Family Mediators Association, a PPC and mediator, and consultant to the Family Mediation Centre Staffordshire. He is Visiting Professor at the Law and Business School, Staffordshire University. He was Legal Aid Family Lawyer of the Year 2007. Neil sits as a Mental Health Tribunal Judge, and has a longstanding interest in the interrelationship between family mediation, justice and the creative arts, and in the development of family dispute resolution to meet all needs and situations. He is currently embarked on a series of 'Conversation Pieces' for mediators in Family Law Journal and a parallel project of songwriting for his singing group, Fish from Oblivion.
Fenn, Sandra
Sandra Fenn worked in various roles supporting children and family welfare across the public sector for more than 20 years before, as a Trustee of Reunite, she became a founding member of the working party convened to explore the possibility of mediating in high-conflict international child abduction cases. As part of this process, she trained as a mediator and comediated most of the original cases chosen for the successful pilot project. For the last 18 years, she has provided assistance to other organisations in Europe and consults with, and collaborates in, setting up similar schemes.
She is a training provider in international cross-border children's issues to mediators in both Europe and Japan. She is part of the European Network of Cross-Border Family Mediators and as such co-mediates with colleagues from other jurisdictions to help parents resolve their issues. She is now a consultant mediator with Reunite.
Conneely, Sinead
Sinead Conneely is a graduate of University College Galway (BA 1993; LLB 1995), University of Cambridge (LLM 1997), Trinity College Dublin (PhD 2001) and the King's Inns (BL 2001). Sinead has spent the last 20 years working as a lecturer in academic institutions - mostly Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) - teaching a wide variety of legal courses, including modules on employment law and mediation. She completed her master's at the University of Cambridge, examining commercial insurance law, corporate finance law and insolvency law, as well as family law and policy. Her PhD was undertaken at Trinity College Dublin. Her thesis
outlined the origins and development of family mediation internationally and then comparatively analysed the adoption and process of family mediation in Ireland and Northern Ireland. She trained as a mediator in 2012. Sinead is project coordinator for the WIT Family Mediation project, where her role is that of administrator and volunteer mediator; and has been conducting empirical research attending family law cases in the District Court since March 2017. In 2018, she was invited by the Legal Aid Board to join the working group for the establishment of the Mediation Council of Ireland.
Allport, Lesley
Lesley Allport has had a long career as a mediation practitioner, spanning the last 30 years. Working initially as a family mediator in the 1980s, she has been involved in developing new areas of practice such as special educational needs mediation and disability conciliation. She mediates conflicts within families, workplaces and education settings, as well as having experience in community mediation and cross-border child abduction cases. Lesley delivers foundation mediation training in several contexts and offers advanced training for supervisors and mediators working directly with children. She has a keen interest in developing professional standards. She is currently Vice Chair of the College of Mediators and acts as an adviser to the Professional Standards Committee. She also sits on the editorial board of the College journal Mediation Theory and Practice. Lesley's academic interest in mediation began in 2005 with a European master's degree, as part of which she developed a model of supervision specific to mediation. In 2016 she successfully completed her PhD with the Birmingham Law School, examining the comparative growth of mediation. Her research included conversations with many mediators working in a variety of contexts and investigated core aspects of mediation practice operating across all sectors.
Roberts, Marian
Marian Roberts is a family mediator; qualified as a barrister and social worker; former Visiting Fellow and Guest Teacher on the ADR Law Masters at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London.
Hunter, Rosemary
Rosemary Hunter FacSS is Professor of Law and Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Kent. She is a feminist socio-legal scholar with particular interests in family law and family justice processes, judging and the judiciary, and access to justice. She has published widely on these topics in both Australia (where she began her academic career) and the UK. With Anne Barlow, she was a member of the ESRC-funded Mapping Paths to Family Justice project, which resulted in their prize-winning book, Mapping Paths to Family Justice: Resolving Family Disputes in Neoliberal Times (Barlow, Hunter, Smithson and Ewing, 2017). Rosemary has been the Academic Member of the Family Justice Council since 2016 and leads the Council's Domestic Abuse Working Group. She is also a member of the Private Law Working Group and the Ministry of Justice's Expert Panel on Harm in the Family Courts. She is a former Chair of the SLSA and a former Council member of JUSTICE.
Wilson, Barbara
Barbara Wilson PhD lives on the south coast of England. Following an earlier career with the former Lord Chancellor's Department, she became a family mediator in 1990, qualifying also as a social worker in 1991. After practising in both fields until 1999, she is now a full-time ADR professional.
Since 2012 she has worked as a mediator and PPC with Phillips Solicitors, a Legal 500 firm based in Basingstoke, Hampshire. She has been involved with various advisory groups, including for the Ministry of Justice; has provided at-court mediation at the Central Family Court, London; and served as a competence assessor for the FMC. She was co-opted to take part in the FMC's professional standards review in 2014. Barbara is a Visiting Scholar at the Law School, University of Strathclyde, where she teaches on the Mediation Elective of the LLM/MSc programme in Mediation and Conflict Resolution. She is also an External Examiner for the National University of Ireland Galway. Her research interests include virtue ethics, mediator expertise and the practical application of theory. She has been published in the UK, Australia, the Caribbean, Denmark and the USA.
Bramwell, Lorraine
Lorraine Bramwell is a well-established national trainer of mediators and directs one of the few mediation training courses that has recognition from both the Family Mediation Standards Board (FMSB) and the College of Mediators. She is a family and civil and commercial mediator and has been in continuous practice since 1995. Lorraine has a master's degree in Mediation and Conflict Resolution, a degree in Psychology and a postgraduate diploma in Applied Social Studies. She has held the positions of both Director and Chair of the College of Mediators, is Chair of the College's Professional Standards Committee and continues to play an active role in the development of mediation standards. Lorraine is an Approved Member of the College of Mediators and holds FMC accreditation. She also teaches mediation skills at university level and is an assessor for the accreditation of professional mediators for the FMC. Lorraine acts as PPC to a number of other practitioners and services, and has pioneered work in the support of new mediators entering the mediation profession.
Lake-Carroll, Angela
Angela Lake-Carroll is a Reunite Trustee. She has over 30 years' experience of working with separated families. She is a collaborative practitioner, an accredited and practising family mediator and a PPC
and trainer, and is Chief Assessor to the Law Society's Family Mediation Accreditation Scheme. She works as an independent consultant across a broad range of family law and family dispute resolution matters. She has worked with and contributed to government policy for families and children and young people, and has extensive experience across the private, public and charitable sectors. Angela has a particular interest in families and social change and family justice reform. She writes and presents training nationally and internationally, and is a contributing author and commentator to Family Law and other professional journals.
She has worked with and contributed to government policy with the Ministry of Justice, and the Departments of Health, Education and Work and Pensions. In 2014, Angela was appointed Co-chair (with Emeritus Professor Janet Walker OBE, Newcastle University) of the government's Family Dispute Resolution Advisory Group and co-authored the report
and recommendations of that group to government. In 2016, Angela was
awarded the John Cornwell Award for her outstanding contribution to
supporting separating families.
Marian Roberts Marian has been in continuous practice as a family mediator at the SE London Family Mediation Bureau since 1982. She qualified as a social worker and barrister, and is accredited by the Legal Aid Agency, the College of Mediators and the Family Mediation Council Standards Board, she specialises in high conflict disputes over children. Marian has been involved in the wider developments of family mediation over the years including a national training programme, the professional regulatory framework, and mediation initiatives in the context of public law and child abduction.
Dr Maria Federica Moscati Maria Federica is a Senior Lecturer in Family Law at the University of Sussex. She is an Italian advocate and holds a PhD from SOAS. She has previously convened and lectured at SOAS, Queen Mary and UCL - University of London, and at the University of Shantou in the People's Republic of China. Before undertaking her doctorate she worked for Save the Children Italy where she specialized in children's rights. Her main research interests lie in issues relating to ADR, Access to Justice, Comparative Family Law, Human Rights with focus on children, and LGBTI people.
