The Sir Anthony Hart Doctoral Paper Prize at the British Legal History Conference 2024 was awarded to Ms Rhiannon Ogden-Jones.

The standard of papers delivered by students at the conference was very high which made the judges decision very difficult. Ms Ogden-Jones is a DPhil candidate at Oxford and her paper was entitled “Insiders and Outsiders in creating national parks: the evolution of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949”.

This excellent paper traced the legal history of this piece of legislation and brought together a wide range of sources, challenging assumptions that this was a post-war initiative. She had a solid grasp of comparative international developments of national parks (including on the island of Ireland) and addressed issues of land law, land use, landscape, environmental law, nationalism, and local and administrative law. She made use of a range of archival sources.

She was presented with her prize at the Conference Dinner on Friday evening in the Bristol Museum by Dr Niamh Howlin on behalf of the Irish Legal History Society.
The judging panel was made of up Dr Niamh Howlin (UCD, chair), Dr Andrew Bell (Bristol), Dr Kevin Costello (UCD), Dr Coleman A. Dennehy (DkIT).

(L-R: Prof. Gwen Seabourne, Ms Rhiannon Ogden-Jones; Dr Joanna McCunn, Dr Niamh Howlin)