NUIM Department of Law

Lecturer

Louise Kennefick specialises in criminal law, criminal justice and criminology. She completed her doctoral thesis at University College Cork in the area of diminished responsibility.  She is a recipient of the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences Postgraduate Scholarship (2008-2011) and was awarded the Aiden Synnott Bursary Prize from University College Cork (2008). She is a qualified solicitor with three years' experience in practice in London and Edinburgh, in general commercial law, litigation and corporate law.
Louise is particularly interested in interdisciplinary research and the reconciliation of criminal law theory with practice.

Conference Papers:

• "A New Diminished Responsibility Defence for England and Wales: An Analysis of s.56 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009" - IV Annual CCJHR Conference, University College Cork, April 2010.
• Poster Session:"The Coroners and Justice Act 2009" - IGLRC, Kings College London, April 2010.
• "Reforming Diminished Responsibility in England and Wales" - European Society of Criminology IX Annual Conference, Ljubljana, Sept 2009.
• "Mitigation or Exculpation? Punishing the Mentally Disordered Offender in Ireland" - UCD Institute of Criminology, Fifth Irish Criminology Conference, Dublin, June 2009.
• "Criminal Responsibility and the Mentally Disordered Offender in Ireland: A Lot Done, More to Do?" - III Annual CCJHR Conference, University College Cork, April 2009.
• "The Blame Game: Criminal Responsibility Theory and the Mentally Disordered Offender in Ireland" - Socio-Legal Studies Association Annual Conference, Leicester, April 2009.
• "Blame, Madness and the Written Word: An Analysis of the Position of the Mentally Disordered Offender through the Lens of Legal Scholarship" - The Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference, London, Sept 2009.
• "Punishing Mentally Disordered Offenders" - European Society of Criminology VIII Annual Conference, Edinburgh, Sept 2008.
• "Prisoner First and Patient Second? A Critique of the Position of the Mentally Disordered Offender in Ireland within a Human Rights Context" - II Annual CCJHR Conference, University College Cork, May 2008. 

PUBLICATIONS

• "What the Doctor Ordered: Revisiting the Relationship Between Psychiatry and the Law in the UK and Ireland" (2008) C.O.L.R. 58.
• "Diminished Responsibility in Ireland: an analysis of the law in theory and practice since 2006," Northern Irish Legal Quarterly, 2011.
• "Introducing a New Diminished Responsibility Defence for England and Wales," Modern Law Review, July 2011.