![Donna Crowe-Urbaniak](https://profiles-cardiff.imgix.net/attachments/9414?w=200&h=200&auto=format&crop=faces&fit=crop&q=90")
Dr Donna Crowe-Urbaniak
(she/her)
- Available for postgraduate supervision
Teams and roles for Donna Crowe-Urbaniak
Lecturer in Law
Overview
I joined Cardiff Law School in January 2024, following an Early Career Fellowship in Family Law at Edinburgh Law School. My research focuses on family justice, gender, vulnerability, and relational autonomy, with a particular focus on how financial remedy law structures lived experience and shapes (in)justice in everyday divorce proceedings. My research combines doctrinal, empirical, and interdisciplinary methods to examine the structural, relational, and gendered dynamics that underpin family law.
I convene the LLB Family Law module at Cardiff and have taught an extensive range of subjects including Gender, Law and Society; Criminal Law; Land Law; and Comparative Family Law at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. I supervise LLB, LLM, and PhD students—including a doctoral student to completion in 2024—and I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Publication
2025
- Crowe-Urbaniak, D. L. 2025. ‘Fair to us’: The use of legal myths in privately negotiated financial settlements in England and Wales. International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 39 (1) ebaf025. (10.1093/lawfam/ebaf025)
- Crowe-Urbaniak, D. L. 2025. ‘Fair to Us’: the use of legal myths in privately negotiated financial settlements in England and Wales. International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 39 (1) ebaf025. (10.1093/lawfam/ebaf025)
- Gribble, R. et al., 2025. Broadening understandings of "identity" among military partners: A multidisciplinary reflection from the United Kingdom; A research note. Armed Forces & Society (10.1177/0095327X251393469)
2024
- Crowe-Urbaniak, D. L. 2024. State obligation to recognise and protect same-sex relationships. Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 46 (1), pp.130-132. (10.1080/09649069.2024.2304981)
2022
- Crowe-Urbaniak, D. L. 2022. Case Report 'A marriage is a marriage': equal sharing in short, childless marriages. Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 44 (1), pp.124-126. (10.1080/09649069.2022.2028405)
Articles
- Crowe-Urbaniak, D. L. 2025. ‘Fair to us’: The use of legal myths in privately negotiated financial settlements in England and Wales. International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 39 (1) ebaf025. (10.1093/lawfam/ebaf025)
- Crowe-Urbaniak, D. L. 2025. ‘Fair to Us’: the use of legal myths in privately negotiated financial settlements in England and Wales. International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 39 (1) ebaf025. (10.1093/lawfam/ebaf025)
- Gribble, R. et al., 2025. Broadening understandings of "identity" among military partners: A multidisciplinary reflection from the United Kingdom; A research note. Armed Forces & Society (10.1177/0095327X251393469)
- Crowe-Urbaniak, D. L. 2024. State obligation to recognise and protect same-sex relationships. Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 46 (1), pp.130-132. (10.1080/09649069.2024.2304981)
- Crowe-Urbaniak, D. L. 2022. Case Report 'A marriage is a marriage': equal sharing in short, childless marriages. Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 44 (1), pp.124-126. (10.1080/09649069.2022.2028405)
Research
I am a socio‑legal researcher whose work focuses on the intersections of family justice, gender, vulnerability, and relational autonomy. My research examines how law structures lived experience in everyday financial remedy proceedings, with particular attention to the ways in which structural inequality, dependency, coercive control, and financial abuse shape outcomes for separating couples. I combine doctrinal, empirical, and interdisciplinary methods to analyse how legal processes can both reinforce and mitigate vulnerability within family justice systems.
My ESRC-funded doctoral research, focusing on structural dependency and compound vulnerability among former military spouses, established the conceptual foundations that underpin my current programme of work. Drawing on doctrinal analysis and qualitative socio‑legal methods, this project examined the ways in which financial dependency and institutional structures interact to shape post‑separation disadvantage and lived experiences of family justice. The findings of my PhD continue to inform my broader research on gendered power, financial remedies, and the socio‑legal production of vulnerability within everyday divorce proceedings.
Teaching
I teach on the following undergraduate modules:
- Family Law
- Criminal Law
- Land Law
- Law and Poverty
I have previously taught:
- Gender, Law, and Society (undergraduate)
- Comparative Family Law (postgraduate)
Biography
Education:
- Fellow, Higher Education Academy (2025)
- PhD in Law, University of Exeter (2023)
- MRes in Socio-Legal Research, Unversity of Exeter (2017)
- Graduate Diploma in Law, De Montfort University (2018)
- BA(Hons), Brigham Young University - Hawaii (1998)
Professional memberships
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
- Member of the Socio-Legal Studies Association
- Member of the Society of Legal Scholars
- Member of the Network on Family Regulation and Society
Academic positions
- 2022 - 2024: Early Career Fellow in Family Law, Edinburgh Law School
- 2021 - 2022: Senior Research Associate, Nuffield Foundation funded, 'Fair Shares' project, Professor Emma Hitchings (PI), University of Bristol
- 2019 - 2021: Postgraduate Teaching Assistant, University of Exeter
Committees and reviewing
- I am an Executive Board Member of the Centre of Law & Society
- Article Reviewer: Journal of Law & Society, Child & Family Law Quarterly, Critical Military Studies, Armed Forces & Society
Supervisions
I am interested in supervising PhD students in the area of:
- Family justice
- Financial remedies
- Regulation of intimate adult relationships
- Vulnerability theory, relational autonomy, and gendered power in the context of Family Law
- Domestic abuse, coercive control
- Gender roles, masculinities and feminities
Current supervision
Past projects
In
Contact Details
Specialisms
- Family law
- Financial Remedies
- Access to justice
- Gender and Social Justice