Dr Mark Coen
Dr Coen is an Associate Professor at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin. His main research interests are in contemporary and historical criminal procedure, with a particular focus on trial by jury and the Law of Evidence. He also researches issues relating to the judiciary and the courts system. He has a particular interest in the historical treatment of women in the legal system and beyond. He is engaged in research and activism in relation to Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, religious-run institutions where girls and women were detained for a wide variety of reasons until the final decades of the twentieth century. He drafted the template for the 2024 Irish legislation that protects records held by non-State actors relating to Ireland’s institutional past (Part 3 of the Maternity Protection, Employment Equality and Preservation of Certain Records Act 2024).
At Clare Hall Mark will be researching a number of projects, including the depiction and discussion of women jurors in 1920s England, and the issue of bystanders and resisters in the context of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries.
Select publications
- Mark Coen, ‘The Early Days of a New Court: Its First Ten Judges Look Back’ in M Coen and N McGrath (eds), The Irish Court of Appeal: The First Decade of an Intermediate Appellate Court (Hart, 2026, forthcoming)
- Mark Coen, ‘”A new order in this country”: Symbolism and the new courts’ in N Howlin (ed), A Century of Courts: The Courts of Justice Act 1924 (Four Courts, 2024) 278-291
- Mark Coen, ‘”Cheap in the End”: A History of Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry’ in M Coen et al (eds), A Dublin Magdalene Laundry: Donnybrook and Church-State Power in Ireland (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023) 65-100
- Mark Coen, ‘The Emotional Labour of Judges in Jury Trials’ (2023) 5(4) Journal of Law and Society 477-499 [co-authored with C Westaby, C Barry and N Howlin]
- Mark Coen, ‘Through a Narrow Window: Women’s Jury Service in Ireland, 1921-1927’ (2022) 9(2) law&history 34-63
- Mark Coen, ‘Safeguarding against “evil results”: The Lord Chief Baron and contempt of Court’ in O Breen and N McGrath (eds), Palles: The Legal Legacy of the last Lord Chief Baron (Four Courts, 2022) 107-124
- Mark Coen, ‘”Radical Reforming Legislation” or “The Politics of Illusion”?: Enacting the Criminal Evidence Act 1992’ (2022) 43(1) Dublin University Law Journal 85-102
- Mark Coen, ‘“The work of some irresponsible women”: Jurors, Ghosts and Embracery in the Irish Free State’ (2020) 38(4) Law and History Review 777-810
