Margaret Doyle

Margaret initially trained as a mediator in community disputes in 1987 and helped establish a number of mediation schemes in London. She trained to mediate in discrimination and equalities disputes in 2001, and she was a member of the first panel established in 2001 by the Disability Rights Commission to mediate in disability discrimination claims. From 2002 to 2021 she mediated in disputes about special educational needs and disabilities as a panel mediator with the national charity KIDS. She now specialises in disputes involving older people and care. She is an accredited member of the College of Mediators and the Elder Mediation International Network and an Associate Member of the mediation team at Garden Court Chambers.

Margaret worked for many years with the Advice Services Alliance to raise awareness of mediation and ombuds within the independent advice sector. She wrote the first guide to ADR for advisers, published in 2000, and has contributed to civil mediation guides published by Advice Now/Law for Life. 

Her research interests include rights-based mediation and redress mechanisms, particularly for complaints involving public bodies; disputes involving equalities, disabilities, and human rights; and the relationship between different redress mechanisms such as mediation, ombuds, and courts and tribunals. She was part of the team establishing UKAJI, the first UK-wide research network on administrative justice, based at the University of Essex School of Law. She is a member of the Academic Panel of the Administrative Justice Council, which is chaired by the Senior President of Tribunals and contributes to oversight of the UK administrative justice system. In 2019 she co-authored (with Nick O’Brien) the book Reimagining Administrative Justice: Human rights in small places (Palgrave Macmillan)

Among her research projects, Margaret has examined the use of mediation in county courts; mediation in judicial review; and dispute resolution mechanisms for equalities and human rights disputes. She was also principal investigator for a mapping study of informal resolution approaches by ombuds in the UK, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, and she

conducted a knowledge exchange project on young people's participation in resolving disputes about their special educational needs and disabilities support funded by an ESRC IAA Fund grant and the Garden Court Chambers Special Fund. 

Margaret is currently a consultant on an ESRC-funded research project, led by Dr Jaime Lindsey, which explores the potential of mediation to deliver therapeutic justice in medical treatment disputes.