Mr Dean Taylor

Dean currently teaches across the LLB programme at all levels. He teaches on the compulsory first-year Legal Systems and Reasoning module; compulsory second-year Land Law and Equity & Trusts modules; and final-year elective Company Law module.

Dean is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Dean is currently completing his PhD thesis (under the supervision of Professor Helen Carr) which examines the phenomenon of property guardianship. Property guardianship originated in the Netherlands and has since been used as a ‘meanwhile’, transient form of housing in urban areas within England where the private rented sector has proved too expensive for individuals.

The concept has recently attracted legal attention and an emergent jurisprudence raises several questions which the thesis explores. The case law raises critical doctrinal questions about the meaning of ownership and possession and how the contemporary landscape compares to the application of these foundational principles in comparable transient housing. This is particularly so in light of some seminal cases in the residential accommodation context in the late-20^th century.

Property guardianship also involves the triangulation of housing, property and contract law and the thesis asks questions around the sociology of these areas and how this is evolving. The thesis also explores how property guardianship and property law shape the vacant and how this is all being played out in the neoliberal state.

To date, Dean has had published a series of articles analysing the court decisions in the Journal of Housing Law, and forthcoming in the Northern Ireland Law Quarterly.