Dr Natalie Ohana

Natalie joined the Law School in 2016 as a lecturer and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow. She holds a PhD from University College London, an LLM (Magna Cum Laude) and an LLB from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Natalie's area of research is the intersection between law and trauma through a socio legal perspective. Natalie is a module convenor of the research led module Law, Testimony and Trauma for second year students, and part of the Constitutional Law and Legal Foundations core modules' teams. 

Natalie's current reserach analyses the links between traumatic events and structural inequalities. As of 2025-2026, her empirical research focuses on the Grenfell Trauma Inquiry, and explores the patterns that emerge when comparing it to other legal proceedigns that related to inequality based trauma, such as Hillsbrough, Stephen Lawrence, and the Mother and Baby Unit, NI. In 2026 Natalie received the Seminar Scheme award from the Modern Law Review, to organise a seminar in Belfast, exploring those links, with Prof Phil Scraton. Natalie received funding from the IAA to commission an artist in 2026, who will support the initiation of a campaign, translating Natalie's reserch into impact, by making social housing a protected chacterstic in the Equality Act 2010.

In 2023, Natalie received the Best Article Award from the Socio-Legal Studies Association for her article The Politics of the Production of Knowledge on Trauma: The Grenfell Tower Inquiry and the Academic of the Year award at University of Exeter for her teaching of Law, Testimony and Trauma. In 2023, through funding from the Arts and Culture Centre, University of Exeter, Natalie collaborated with the artist Tom Stockley around her teaching.

Natalie's PhD in UCL examined the legal knowledge around domestic violence in the UK and revealed the engrained and structural discourse-related barriers that prevent its change. While in UCL Natalie worked with women who resided in a refuge in London to understand their experiences of legal proceedings related to domestic violence. Natalie examined whether by integrating art with dialogue it becomes possible to understand the subtlties and deeper layers of experiences, a method she emplyed in the work with the Grenfell community as well. Natalie was awarded the UCL Public Engagmenet Award for the work in the refuge. For more information on the work in the refuge and the use of art in the workshops see the Ted Talk: Beyond Words: Breaking the Boundaries of Legal Language.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ydrf7DljfQ

Before her PhD Natalie was a lawyer and head of legal department in Isha L'Isha, a refuge for women who suffered domestic violence and their children in Jerusalem, representing women in legal proceedings in civil and religous courts and advocating for legislative and policy change in a national level.

Natalie's office hours are Mondays 3pm to 5pm.

Research supervision:

Phd:

Alya Zoabi, Anti-colonial and feminist advocacy in Israel Palestine (Co supervised with Dr Katie Natanel, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter)