Professor Mark James re-joined Manchester Law School in January 2016. He began his academic career at Anglia Polytechnic University on a research scholarship, examining the scope of the consent given by participants in contact sports to injury-causing challenges. His first appointment at Manchester Metropolitan University was in 1997 to lecture in criminal law and sports law and to develop its innovative MA (Sport and the Law).

In 2006, Mark moved to the University of Salford to help establish the Salford Law School. During his time there, he was appointed Reader in Law, Associate Head (Research), Director of the Salford Centre of Legal Research and served two years as Head of School. From 2013 to 2015, he was Director of REF Strategy at Northumbria Law School, from where he return to MMU to take up the position of Director of Research in the Law School. Mark is one of the country's leading experts on sports law and Olympic law.

Specialism: Sports Law and Olympic Law

Recent publications:

• ‘The Olympics, Transnational Law and Legal Transplants: The International Olympic Committee, ambush marketing and ticket touting’ with G Osborn (forthcoming, Legal Studies, May 2016).
• ‘Criminalising contract: does ticket touting warrant the protection of the criminal law?’ with G Osborn, [2016] 1 Criminal Law Review 4-19.
• ‘Public order and the rebalancing of football fans’ rights: Legal problems with pre-emptive policing strategies and banning orders’ with G Pearson, [2015] Public Law 458-475.
• ‘Regulating anti-social behaviour amongst football spectators since 1985’ with G Pearson in S Pickard (Ed), Anti-social behaviour in Britain: Victorian and contemporary perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp.296-307.
• ‘Player violence and compensation for injury: R v Barnes [2005] 1 Cr App R 507’ in J Anderson (Ed), Leading Cases and Decisions in Sports Law (TMC Asser Press, 2013), pp.323-337.
• ‘The Olympic Laws and the tensions and contradictions of promoting and preserving the Olympic Ideal’ with G Osborn in V Girginov (Ed), Handbook of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games: Vol. 1 Making the Games (Routledge, 2013) pp.74-86.
• ‘Guilt by association: Olympic Law and the IP Effect’ with G Osborn, [2013] 2 Intellectual Property Quarterly 97-113.
  Sports Law, 2nd edition, Palgrave Law Masters Series (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).