#8470, Nicola (Nicky) Margaret HELME

Nicola Padfield read Jurisprudence at St. Anne's College, Oxford for a BA in 1976. The following year she read for a post graduate diploma in Criminology at Darwin College, Cambridge. During 1978/79 she completed a diploma in French Law at the University of Aix-Marseille. Called to the bar 27th July 1978, she practised as a criminal law barrister.

From 1990 to 1991 she was an Alumni Affairs Officer at Cambridge University being elected a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College the latter year. In 1992 she became an affiliated lecturer in Crimonology; in 1996 a lecturer and in 2002 a senior lecturer. On 31st October 2002 she was appointed a Recorder sitting on the South Eastern Circuit and the Crown Court and in February 2009 a Bencher of the Middle Temple. For the 2008/2009 academic year she was Visiting Professor at the University of Poitiers in France.

2002 saw her promoted to Reader in Criminal and Penal Justice and in October 2013 she took up her appointment as the 8th Master of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. In 2018 she was made an honorary QC.

On 24th September 2020 the Faculty of Law issued the following statement:

The Faculty is delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Nicky Padfield as the Faculty’s inaugural Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity (EDI).

This new role has been created following the Faculty’s receipt, earlier this year, of an Athena SWAN Bronze Award, which recognised the Faculty’s commitment to addressing matters of gender equality. In preparing its Athena SWAN application and associated action plan, the Faculty undertook a process that involved considerable engagement — with students, academic staff and professional services staff — and self-reflection. That process underlined the need for equality, diversity and inclusivity-related matters to be fully embedded within the Faculty’s governance and decision-making processes. The establishment of the post of Director of EDI is key to the achievement of that objective — and while the creation of the post emerged from a process that was primarily concerned with gender equality, the remit of the role has been framed with reference to equality in its myriad forms and on all relevant grounds.

Professor Padfield has worked in the University of Cambridge for 30 years, serving for six years as Master of Fitzwilliam College. She has also been a Tutor, an Admissions Tutor and a part-time judge. Her research has long been concerned with throwing light on disadvantages and injustice within the criminal justice system.

Welcoming Professor Padfield’s appointment, Professor Mark Elliott, Chair of the Faculty of Law, commented:

"This appointment underlines our commitment to ensuring that the Faculty of Law is a welcoming and inclusive environment for all students and colleagues, and builds on the Faculty’s access and widening participation work that seeks to ensure that our student body fully reflects the diversity of our society. I look forward very much to working with Professor Padfield as she begins in this new role."

Nicky Padfield commented:

"I am pleased to take on this role in the Faculty. I know it will be a challenge: although the University and the Faculty have made significant progress in recent years in this area, there is also a great deal of work that remains to be done. I shall bend over backwards to work with staff and students to help ensure that the values of equality, diversity and inclusivity are advanced in ways that really make a difference."

Professor Padfield formally takes up her role as Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity on 1 October 2020.

On Friday, 15 November 2024 the Cambridge Law Faculty made the following announcement:

Nicola Padfield KC. The Faculty is delighted at the announcement that Nicky Padfield, Emeritus Professor of Criminal and Penal Justice at the Law Faculty, has been appointed as one of a panel of experts appointed to support a new Government criminal sentencing review, which was announced yesterday.

The review, chaired by former Conservative justice secretary David Gauke, aims to end the crisis in our prisons and make sure the country always has the prisons space needed to keep people safe, will consider how other jurisdictions who have faced similar capacity challenges have been able to tackle rising prison populations and reducing reoffending.

Nicola was formerly Director of the Cambridge Centre for Criminal Justice (CCCJ) and Master of Fitzwilliam College from 2013-2019.

After her first degree at St Anne's College, Oxford Nicky studied for the Diploma in Criminology at Darwin College. Called to the Bar in 1978, she then spent a year at the University of Aix-Marseille and married Christopher (who read Engineering at Fitzwilliam and graduated in 1971). Her teaching and research has covered a broad canvas in criminal law and evidence, sentencing and criminal justice more generally. She sat as a Recorder (part-time judge) in the Crown Court from 2002-2014, is a Bencher of the Middle Temple and served as the University Advocate for several years. She was appointed as Honorary Queen's Counsel in 2018.

Her books include The Criminal Justice Process: Text and Materials (5th edition, 2016); Criminal Law (10th edition, 2016), and Beyond the Tariff: Human rights and the release of life sentence prisoners (2002). She has edited and contributed to a number of more recent collections of essays on parole and early release (which has involved research in a number of European countries). Whilst maintaining a wide academic lens, her recent research has explored how the law on release from, and recall to, prison works in practice, and how it is perceived by offenders and those who work in the system.

Other members of the panel of experts are Lord Burnett (Previous Lord Chief Justice (2017-2023)), Catherine Larsen KPM (retired inspector from Avon and Somerset whose work included transforming the way rape and serious sexual offences are investigated by the police), Sir Peter Lewis (Former Chief Executive of Crown Prosecution Service (2007-2016), Former Registrar of the International Criminal Court (2023)), Michael Spurr (Former Chief Executive of HMPPS (2010-2019)) and Andrea Simon (Executive Director at End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW)).