Brontie Ansell

Biography

Brontie is a senior lecturer in law in Essex Law School and has a particular interest in climate justice. She also works as a supervising solicitor in The Law Clinic at the university. She teaches on the land law, employment law and legal research modules. Brontie is a fellow of the HEA. As a lecturer-practitioner, Brontie specialises in housing, employment and climate justice matters when giving legal advice. Brontie gained her LLB and LLM at Sussex University in 2007. Brontie qualified as a solicitor in 2012 and spent time working at a top 60 firm in the UK as a commercial lawyer. She then moved to an international organisation working with groups of international lawyers on cross border projects. She continued to teach at university business schools including Grenoble Ecole de Management during her time in practice. She then moved to focus on her academic career, taking a position as a full time lecturer in law at the University of Brighton, then senior lecturer in 2020. Here she set up their first pro bono law clinic in 2019 and she became clinic director in 2020. Brontie was also head of department for law at the University of Brighton. Brontie is a director and co-founder of the NGO Lawyers for Nature, a CIC that is dedicated to research, education and legal advice in environmental justice. She manages the research and engagement team as well as providing pro bono legal assitance to community groups and individuals striving to protect the natural world and its non-human inhabitants. Brontie has a particular focus on providing legal advice on matters such as unlawful eviction of environmental camps, planning and judicial review, and use of the Localism Act to purchase community assets. Lawyers for Nature gained notoriety with its landmark case against Sheffield City Council where 17,500 street trees were saved from being unnecessarily destroyed by a private contractor and protestors had their charges overturned and avoided prison. Brontie is currently advising ‘Save the Middlewick Ranges’ community group on how they might save a prime biodiversity plot of 100 acres near the University of Essex that Colchester Council wish to build 1000 homes on. Brontie is currently conducting commercial research into rights of nature and the use of this theory in corporate law. In particular she is looking at board composition, voting powers and 'nature directors'. Brontie is also currently writing and editing a book on teaching climate justice in university law clinics.

Qualifications

• LLB Law with Management University of Sussex, (2006)

• LLM Rights, responsibility and the law University of Sussex, (2007)