Dr Claire Bessant joined Northumbria University’s School of Law in 2002 having made the decision to move to academia from private practice where she worked as a solicitor specialising in family law. She has since published in the fields of family law, privacy law, data protection, information sharing and human rights, and has contributed to government and parliamentary consultations, on both domestic violence and online privacy.  

Claire is a member of the Society of Legal Scholars and has recently been elected to the Society of Legal Scholars Executive Committee, with her appointment running from 1 October 2023 until 30 September 2026. She is a member of the Socio-Legal Studies Association. She is a mentor for the SLSA's pilot mentoring scheme and with colleagues at Northumbria is co-organising the SLSA's PGR conference 2024.  Claire is also a member of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) and has twice served as PGR mentor for AoIR.

At Northumbria, Claire is a member of Northumbria Law School's Law and Society Research Group and is a member of and part of the management group of Northumbria's Gender, Violence and Abuse Interdisciplinary Research Theme.

Claire’s teaching currently focuses upon information law (including data protection, access to environmental information and inter-agency information sharing for child protection purposes).  Claire has also led the postgraduate research skills module and has taught on the undergraduate and postgraduate Childcare Law and Family Law modules and on the undergraduate distance learning English Legal Systems module.

Claire is currently PGR Lead for Northumbria Law School. She has previously undertaken a variety of administrative roles including Faculty Director of Programme Approvals and Review, Director of Education for Postgraduate Law Programmes and Director of Education for Law. 

Claire is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a reviewer for the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme and has sat as an expert member on several panels considering the validation of a number of  law-related programmes at other institutions.

Claire is joint Managing Editor of the open-access Journal of Law, Technology and Trust. 

Much of Claire's research explores how family privacy impacts upon the law in practice. Family privacy is here understood as an ideology which protects the family from the intervention of state and society and enables the family (notably parents) to take decisions about the family and children’s upbringing. Claire's doctoral thesis titled 'Parental Views about the Importance of Family Privacy and its Protection in English Law'used empirical methods to explore parents’ understanding of family privacy and the laws protecting such privacy.  The thesis proposes a new framework for understanding the relationship between family, state and society and a new definition of family privacy which reflects both how parents understand the term and jurisprudential views on the family and how it should be protected from state and society. Claire is currently working on a monograph, to be published by Routledge, Family Law, Privacy and Ideology, which will explore the application of this framework in practice, and consider how the law currently operates to protect the family's privacy from state, individuals and big tech.

Claire's research on family privacy has been used to provide a new perspective to discussions regarding children's privacy, online harms, and the role parents and Government should play in protecting children from such harms (chapter currently in press). Claire is also currently undertaking empirical research exploring educators' understanding of the legal obligations imposed upon them where children are at risk of/have suffered female genital mutilation, again using family privacy as a lens through which to explore the state's role in protecting vulnerable family members.  

Claire's research also explores the impact of technology upon children's privacy.  Claire's research on 'sharenting' (a term used when parents share information about their children online) and the legal remedies afforded to children in the UK whose information is shared online by their parents was published in Communications Law in 2018. Her consideration with Dr Maximillian Schnebbe of the application of the UKGDPR and EUGDPR to the phenomenon of shareting was published in Datenschutz und Datensicherheit in 2022. During 2021-2 Claire worked with an international, interdisciplinary team of academics to develop further understanding of the sharenting phenomenon, the benefits that sharenting brings and the risks that it poses, with a view to identifying further avenues for research and developing policy recommendations. This research forms the basis of a recent publication “Sharenting in an Evolving Digital World: Increasing Online Connection and Consumer Vulnerability” in the Journal of Consumer Affairs. 

Claire's interests in exploring the impact of digital technologies upon children has also led to another international collaboration which is currently exploring parents' awareness of dark design, an intentionally deceptive user interface designed to manipulate users, including children, into certain behaviours, including the sharing of their personal information.

In 2020-21 Claire formed part of the Observatory for the Monitoring for Data-Driven Approaches to Covid-19 (OMDDAC), a collaboration between Northumbria University & the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), funded by AHRC to research data-driven approaches to Covid-19.  Claire led on OMDDAC's research with young people which asked 'Are young people aware of how data (including their own personal data) has been used during the pandemic and if so, what views do they hold about its use?' The findings and recommendations drawn from this research are now available in the European Journal of Law and Technology: Children, Public Sector Data-Driven Decision-Making and Article 12 UNCRC