Kelly Shuttleworth

I am originally from the UK, and was living in central London before moving to Auckland nearly three years ago. I grew up mostly in Dubai, though I haven’t been back there in over a decade – there’s just too many other places to go!

I speak English, and a fair bit of both Spanish and Arabic. (Though please don’t test me on them!)

I love to hike, and that was a huge motivating factor in moving to New Zealand. I am working my way through the list of Great Walks, and am always up for staying in a little hut in the middle of nowhere. I also paint and help run a cozy book club.

Vanuatu! What a fascinating place – from diving at Million Dollar Point, to staying in a treehouse by an active volcano. It is top of my list, though not the easiest to plan and book! 

I have to say I’m a strong character, who is often passionate about an awful lot of things. Top of that list is probably politics – I worked at a political think tank for a few years, and it is a crucial aspect of my PhD too. 

Constitutional Conventions as Mechanisms of Governance: Lessons on their Nature and Effectiveness from the UK, Canada, and New Zealand.

My undergraduate degree was in law, and I narrowed in on constitutional theory as my particular interest through my Master’s degree in international political theory. I then worked in devolution research in the UK, and through that came across the crucial and underappreciated role of constitutional conventions. 

Primarily I aim to be able to bring the existing theory up to date with the contemporary case studies that I am analysing.

I am also putting forward recommendations for the political areas in which conventions should be considered a suitable mechanism for governance, and in which areas they are not appropriate, vulnerable or largely ineffective – recommendations which I hope will reach parliamentarians.

I am very keen to do a postdoctoral fellowship, and really hope to get the opportunity to expand and apply the analysis from my thesis to constitutional law in the United States.

I have thought about this a lot, and Agatha Christie is always top of my list. Not only was she a very interesting woman, but I would theme the dinner as a murder mystery party.

Other guests would include Thomas Hobbes, Philippe Sands and Taylor Swift.