Dr Connor Morris-Watts

SFHEA, PGCHE, CELTA

Research

Connor’s primary pedagogical / scholarship interests are in:

• Quality assurance and enhancement (including course and assessment design; the real-world implementation of the QAA Quality Code and FHEQ descriptors; and academic integrity and misconduct, particularly in relation to generative AI); 
• Employability (including authentic assessment, helping learners develop SQE and CILEX competencies, and exploring ways in which academic legal training can be designed to address the real-life challenges experienced by legal practitioners); and,
• How techniques used to teach English to non-native English speakers can be used more widely to enhance all learners’ studies.

Academically, Connor is broadly interested in the ways in which law and ideology (particularly philosophy) interact. For instance, his doctoral thesis examined such matters as political constitutionalism and the UK Constitution, natural law, legal positivism, and human rights in relation to the philosophical and legal systems of authoritarian regimes in twentieth-century literature.

Teaching

Connor currently teaches on land law and contract law modules and is a Module Leader of the Commercial Property: Skills and Practice course on the School’s LLB degree programmes. Connor has led, developed and/or taught courses/units in these areas, as well as in public law, tort law, company and partnerships law, legal systems and services, and trusts law. He also developed and taught a law module to accounting students aligned to the requirements of Cardiff Business School (CARBS).

Connor has developed, led and/or taught on LLB, SQE, CILEX and Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) programmes, and he has also taught philosophy and political philosophy. He has led various programmes of study, including through the (re-)validation process, and served on numerous programme validation panels for other institutions.

At another institution, Connor was also appointed as one of three developers to design a Certificate in International Teaching and Learning, which is accredited by Advance HE and leads to Fellowship (FHEA) status on completion. He led the development of the constructive alignment, quality assurance and enhancement, academic misconduct/integrity, learning taxonomies and threshold concepts unit materials and also contributed to other units of the course.

Connor places a strong emphasis on employability in his teaching approach to help learners gain legal practice (including SQE) competencies and prepare for graduate employment. He also actively engages in a range of quality assurance methods to help assure and enhance the quality of his teaching and assessment practices.

Biography

Connor holds a PhD, a BA (Hons) degree, a Graduate Diploma in Law, a Cambridge CELTA qualification, and a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education (PGCHE). He is a Senior Fellow (SFHEA) of Advance HE, and he has served as a mentor and assessor for Advance HE fellowship applications (at AFHEA, FHEA and SFHEA levels) from colleagues across Cardiff University.

Prior to joining the School of Law and Politics, Connor was Head of Department at the Cardiff University International Study Centre, where he taught, developed programmes and led a large team of lecturers and academic leads in the delivery of multiple programmes to students from various countries around the world. In this role, Connor was responsible for the strategic direction of the department, the line management of various academic staff and leading various academic colleagues through periods of significant change.

In legal practice, Connor undertook senior legal work in property/land law and delivered training to solicitors, trainee solicitors, conveyancers and paralegals, including his own programme that was accredited/approved by the Institute of Paralegals (later owned by CILEX) and The CPD Certification Service. In one firm, he was also Head of Learning and Development and Head of Compliance, which involved the recruitment of staff, leading in the training of the firm’s conveyancing staff and serving as a key point of contact for fee-earning and paralegal staff with various technical property law, professional regulatory and business operational matters. Connor was also heavily involved in the management and recruitment of staff, giving him a strong insight into the factors affecting graduate recruitment in the legal services sector.

Supervisions

Connor welcomes applications from those wishing to conduct research in any of his areas of specialism. Connor is particularly interested in projects that consider any of the following areas (broadly construed):

• Property/Land law.
• Contract law.
• Matters relevant to professional legal practice.
• The use of generative AI in legal practice and/or higher education.
• Public law (i.e. constitutional, administrative and/or human rights law).
• Jurisprudence (and philosophy more broadly).
• The relationship between law and ideology (broadly construed, but particularly philosophy, including political philosophy).

If you are unsure about whether your project is suitable, or if would like to discuss working with Connor on your research project, please contact Connor directly (via email at [email protected]) with information on your project and a copy of your CV, and he will assist you from there.