Human rights barrister, lecturer and campaigner, Abiodun Michael Olatokun, is joining the Department as an Associate Lecturer this September. He will be injecting excellent strengths to our faculty and law programmes, with a unique profile at the intersection of legal practice, theory, NGO activism and doing pioneering work with schools across the UK as well as having lived and taught locally to Goldsmiths. We are very excited.

Here Abiodun sets out what enthuses him about Goldsmiths Law and the range of activity he will be undertaking, and talks to us about his background, professional successes and what he likes to do outside of Law and Politics even.

What is your key reason for joining Goldsmiths?

I am a big fan of the practice-based approach to teaching law that has been developed at Goldsmiths over the last few years. It is an example of a university working in the real world to make a difference. From the Knowing Our Rights, Lewisham Law Challenge and Deptford Green school Law Society initiative where colleagues deliver lessons to schools across London and children in local schools, to engagement with the most important consultations in the field of human rights, Goldsmiths is a shining example of an academic institution achieving impact, and I want to be part of that mission.

Have we met you before?

I am no stranger to Goldsmiths, nor our Head of Department! I am an Old Kent Roader and a long-term collaborator with the Department of Law here. I first met Dimitrios Giannoulopoulos when he visited us at my previous employer, the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law. Since then we’ve been collaborating in a range of forums; he reviewed my massive open online course (Citizenship and the Rule of Law).

In October 2020 I spoke to Goldsmiths students for the first time in an online session called ‘Law and policymaking: Meet the expert’. I appeared again a few weeks later giving a November 2020 paper at an online conference we ran during the pandemic. The title of that talk was “Human rights instruments are the bricks in the foundations of a rights consciousness culture, but does the building stand strong today?”.

Around that time, the Secretary of State for Justice Robert Buckland began looking at the Human Rights Act. Dimitrios led a group of public law practitioners and academics in making a submission to this 2020-2021 Independent Human Rights Act Review. I wrote about novel issues in the use of advanced surveillance systems by police forces and the implications for our privacy rights.

I came in to talk to Goldsmiths students again in September 2021 about the Right to Protest, and came once again to give a careers talk for the Human Rights Law Association in October 2023.

What are your major professional achievements outside of the law?

I helped the Children’s Commissioner with a report into the commercialisation and sexualisation of Young People, for which I received the Diana Champion Volunteer Award from the Prime Minister in 2011. I was the Chair of the UK youth Parliament in the west Midlands and spoke about the war in Afghanistan from the Prime Minister’s dispatch box. I was a vice-president of my Students’ Union focusing on Community issues, and worked with others to register over 10,000 people for the general and local elections of 2015, and then went on to lead the national voter registration drive for the EU referendum.

What are your major professional achievements within the law?

I was a Research Fellow, then Research Leader and Diversity Officer at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) and Bingham Centre for six years. There I led initiatives to teach children and young people about the rule of law. I was then appointed to the Solicitor General’s Public Legal Education Committee, and we worked together to produce the government’s 10-year vision for public legal education.

Since 2017, I have been working on a programme with the law firm DLA Piper to improve the Rule of Law across the world. The Global Scholarships Programme is an initiative to support talented lawyers from countries where the rule of law is challenged to contribute to the development of the legal culture of their nations. I have led a rule of law training programme in Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa and Mozambique and continue to run the programme domestically with Said Business School at Oxford.

As a barrister, I am most proud of securing asylum for refugees who have been persecuted due to their ethnic origin or political beliefs.

What areas of law do you practise?

I have a broad practice which encompasses all areas in which human rights and public law are engaged. These areas include:

Asylum- assisting those who would face persecution if they were to be returned to their country of origin;

Education- supporting schools/young people in appeals concerning exclusion or disability discrimination;

Employment- working for employers/employees in cases concerning unfair dismissal, discrimination, whistleblowing and victimisation;

Extradition- representing requested persons in cases where their home state seeks to have them stand trial or serve a prison sentence;

Property- acting in cases concerning possession of tenant’s homes.

Where have you taught previously?

I was a Lecturer in Law at London South Bank University for 4 years before joining Goldsmiths.

I then worked with others to create Citizenship and The Rule of Law, one of the most successful human rights law courses in the world with 23,000 students from over 200 nations and territories. Aside from teaching law, I delivered interactive democracy workshops all over the country as part of the National Voter Registration Drive of 2016 which I led.

What will you be teaching?

My role at Goldsmiths will be an eclectic mix of project co-ordination and teaching using skills I have developed as a barrister, lecturer and campaigner. My involvement will include (but not be limited to) the following:

• Criminal Evidence with Advanced Mooting and Advocacy- I will be part of the teaching team for Year 3 students learning about principles of criminal evidence. We will help students grow as advocates whilst ensuring a strong foundation in the theory of evidence.
• Criminal Law: Theory and Practice- I will be part of the teaching team for Year 1 students learning about Criminal Law, a compulsory qualifying module for would-be English lawyers which I very much look forward to teaching. It was my favourite module as an undergraduate and I can hope to tell interesting stories during seminars about my work experience to date, including my growing extradition practice;
• Knowing Our Rights School Visits and Deptford Green School Law Society Initiative- I will visit schools to deliver workshops to the public on their constitutional and public rights, with an emphasis on entitlements which flow from the Human Rights Act 1998 and European Convention on Human Rights; and will work with Year 9-Year 11 students at Deptford Green School in our neighbourhood, preparing them to take part in external mooting and debating competitions and introducing them to key concepts of Law and institutions.
• Mooting/Debating Club- I will help our students develop their skills of advocacy by supervising and supporting them in developing legal and political arguments;
• LLM Human Rights and Criminal Justice: NGO Litigation, Advocacy and Practice- I will teach a seminar in Semester 1 on the broad-based model of community organising designed by the Industrial Areas Foundation and deployed in the UK by Citizens UK, which has led to many wins for civil society and marginalised communities in public policy;
• LLM International Human Rights: Advanced Themes & Contemporary Debates- I will be teaching four seminars in the second semester of the LLM programme. Topics include issues to consider in the incorporation of modern machine learning algorithms in the justice sector, emerging questions in the field of non-discrimination/equality law, the consequences of manipulation of the rule of law by authoritarians and contemporary matters in the human right to privacy.

What is your philosophy for teaching?

I understand that life can be difficult for students, and that outcomes in the classroom are primarily determined by life outside of it. I try to build meaning with my students by using examples of the law in their lives to develop our joint understanding of the legal principles involved.

I always aim to make my classroom a fun space in which students feel comfortable. I am a big fan of a teaching style that encourages movement and participation (to the extent that students feel it is appropriate). I believe that legal study is a means of interpreting and understanding our world today, not in antiquity, and as such I try to demonstrate how the law works through reference to current affairs, drawing connections between the origin of a legal principle and the present day.

What do you like to do outside of law and politics?

I am an avid sportsman and always will be. I play rugby for Southwark RFC and train at Crossfit Bermondsey, with whom I compete in amateur weightlifting, gymnastics and cardio competitions across London. I also love video games and the card game Magic the Gathering.