News & Events Dr Brian Tobin Promoted to Associate Professor

The School of Law is delighted to announce that our colleague Dr Brian Tobin has been promoted to Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer. Dr Tobin lectures in Family and Child Law and Equity I, and has previously received the CBPPL Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (2023), the Dean's Award for Inclusive Teaching  (2021), and last year he was 1 of 9 national Finalists for Legal Educator of the Year at the Dye and Durham Irish Law Awards 2023.

In 2023, Dr Tobin's first book, The Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Relationships: Emerging Families in Ireland and Beyond (Oxford: Hart, 2023) was launched at University of Galway by Mr Justice Gerard Hogan of the Supreme Court of Ireland, who described it as 'scholarship at its finest in terms of avant garde family law'. Dr Tobin has also published chapters in edited collections and numerous peer-reviewed articles in the leading academic journals in his field, and he has received funding for research and scholarly activity from, among others, the Department of Justice (Ireland), the Royal Irish Academy, and the Society of Legal Scholars.

Dr Tobin has been invited to appear before parliamentary committees in Dublin and London, and he represented Ireland at the U.K. regional consultation on the Verona Principles, a set of international guidelines for the protection of the rights of children born through surrogacy. Dr Tobin’s work has been cited in reports published by parliamentary committees/law reform bodies in Ireland, the U.K. and New Zealand, and he has contributed, as the national expert for Ireland, to an impact assessment for a proposed EU Digital Certificate of Parenthood.

Dr Tobin is a frequent media contributor, having written numerous ‘Op-Ed’ articles for the Irish Examiner, Irish Times, and the Business Post. He has been quoted in national and international newspaper articles and he has appeared on national and local radio shows as well as national and international TV programmes.

Dr Tobin spent the academic year 2018-2019 as a Visiting Researcher at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London. In 2023, He was elected a member of the EDI Committee of the Society of Legal Scholars. At University of Galway School of Law, Dr Tobin has previously acted as the Deputy Head of the School of Law, the Director of Student Career Development, and he is currently the Programme Director for the Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL). Dr Tobin is also currently a member of the University of Galway’s Research Ethics Committee.