Samuel White is a Senior Lecturer in Law in the School of Business and Creative Industries. He completed his LLB (Hons) at the University of Dundee before working in risk and compliance in the financial services sector.

In 2017 he returned to the University of Dundee to complete a PhD funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. Samuel’s doctoral research addressed the protection of human rights within the UK, particularly examining the effect of international human rights treaties in the UK context.

Prior to joining UWS, Samuel was a postdoctoral researcher working on the Horizon 2020 funded Risk Aware Port Inspection Drone (RAPID) project. 

He has a particular interest in human rights (at the domestic and international levels), constitutional law, the interaction between domestic and international law, the legal protection of cultural heritahe and international criminal law. 

Since 2015, Samuel has been a director of the Scottish Legal Action Group, an access to justice charity.

Samuel is currently researching the use of international human rights treaties by domestic courts in the UK. He was recently awarded an RSE Small Research Grant to work with Susannah Paul to examine this use in Scottish courts, with a view to developing this use and furthering human rights protection in Scotland.

He is also engaged in research on the way in which human rights treaty bodies' decisions are enforced and how effective these mechanisms are. In particular, Samuel is researching the extent to which the UK complies with its human rights treaty obligations.

Samuel is developing research in the legal protection of cultural heritage, particularly in the context of armed conflict and has recently spoken and published in this field.

In addition to this research Samuel is a Rapporteur for the Oxford Reports on International Law where his work focuses on the decisions of the UN human rights treaty bodies.   

Building on his PhD and work on the use of human rights treaties by the courts in England and Wales, Samuel is keen to broaden this research to the rest of the UK. In particular, he is interested in understanding the how and why courts do or do not use human rights treaties in order to provide guidance on how these treaties can be more effectively harnessed by lawyers.

Samuel is keen to hear from, and work with, human rights charities and organisations, with a view to applying his research in practical ways and strengthen rights protection in the UK.

Samuel has provided expert evidence on proposed reform to the Human Rights Act 1998. The UK Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights recently cited evidence he had co-authored in their report on the Government's onging review of the Human Rights Act.

He is available provide expert input on issues of human rights law, and the protection of human rights in the UK.

In the current academic year, Samuel will be teaching:

Advanced Public Law

Honours Dissertation

International Criminal Law

Legal Research Methods