About Us

A New Methodological Approach to The History of Divorce, 1857-1923, is a two year Economic and Social Research Council funded project. The Project Team consists of the Principal Investigator, Dr Jennifer Aston, an Associate Professor in Law, and Dr Diane Ranyard, a Senior Research Assistant, both based in the Department of Law at Northumbria University’s Newcastle Campus.

The Project Team will work alongside the Project Partner, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS), to identify key areas of policy that the data from this project can inform to contextualise contemporary issues. This will be achieved through collaborative policy workshops with policy makers and third sector groups (our Project Partner CAFCASS), and a written policy briefing report. This will provide the Project Partner with previously unknown and unknowable longitudinal data about the history of the family court system, which they can use to shape and illustrate their future campaigns and influence new practice direction.

The Project Team will also collaborate closely with The National Archives as a Project Partner, to engage with groups outside the academy, notably the family history and genealogy community, to raise awareness of the rich information contained in the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Records. This will include producing a webinar about the project and its key findings which will be available on The National Archives You Tube channel and promoted on social media, curating displays of related archive material for The National Archives and presenting the project findings to archive users as part of The National Archive’s ‘Catalogue Day’.

Find out more about our Project Team here and our Project Partners here.