Olayinka Lewis

Olayinka joined the School of Law and Human Rights Centre as a Lecturer in October 2021. He holds a PhD in law from the University of Aberdeen. His PhD thesis examined the impact of legal pluralism on land and mineral ownership and control. Olayinka employed the use of legal theory in underpinning ownership of land and minerals and analysed empirical data from semi-structured interviews as part of the qualitative research used in answering the thesis question. He holds an LLM in Oil and Gas law also from the University of Aberdeen and an LLB (Hons). Olayinka is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and is an English qualified practising solicitor.

He has strong interests in UK Immigration Law from both a theoretical and practical perspective and has over a decade’s experience of advising clients on UK Immigration law. Olayinka has various research interests but his key areas are immigration, nationality & asylum law, legal pluralism, customary law, and energy law. He welcomes supervision in these areas.

Before joining Essex Law School, Olayinka worked at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen where taught a range of modules and served as Academic Director of the Law Clinic, where he helped plug the gap created by the lack of access to justice. He was a Visiting Professor at ESC Clermont Graduate School of Management, France from 2016 to 2019 where he taught International Commercial Law. He received a grant from the Young Universities for the Future of Europe for a Refugee Rights Awareness project. in 2022.

Olayinka currently serves as a Member of the Immigration and Asylum Sub-committee of the Law Society of Scotland, an academic reviewer for Routledge and as an External Examiner to the University of Bradford and the University of Wolverhampton. He is the Immigration Lead at the Essex Law Clinic. And a member of various societies and professional working groups including; the Society of Legal Scholars, Socio-legal Studies Association, Law and Society Association and the Law Society of England and Wales.