When asked to identify what he loves about his work, Professor Benjamin J. Goold identifies two things. Firstly, "thinking about theory." He enjoys that law forces him to "think about the underlying structures of how things work." Secondly, he embraces that law facilitates "talking to people" and being pushed to think about practical implications.
Professor Goold holds an LLB from the University of Tasmania, and a BCL and a D. Phil (Law) from the University of Oxford. After studying at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, Professor Goold returned to his alma mater to fellow at Somerville College and to lecture in legal topics at Oxford's Faculty of Law. Professor Goold has also taught at the University of Niigata in Japan and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Prior to beginning his research and professorship at the Allard School of Law, he conducted research at the Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Germany and at the Centre de Recherches Sociologiques sur les Droits et Institutions Pénales in France.
Professor Goold joined the Faculty in 2010 as an Associate Professor and has been a full Professor at the Allard School of Law since 2013. As a professor in criminal law, criminology, and torts, Professor Goold provides his students with a one-line motto: "don't defer." Through this motto, he hopes to demonstrate to his students that, "it's the argument that matters, not who said it."
Professor Goold’s research primarily focuses on privacy rights and its intersection with police and intelligence surveillance technology and data collection. His research delves into the social and political implications of security consumption on privacy rights. In studying the dynamic between security measures and human rights, Professor Goold has numerous publications, including CCTV and Policing (Oxford University Press; shortlisted for the British Criminology Book Prize in 2005) and Security and Human Rights (Hart Publishing; edited with Liora Lazarus).
Through his career, Professor Goold has been an Independent Advisor to the UK Identity and Passport Service and a Specialist Legal Advisor on a House of Lords inquiry regarding privacy matters and data collection in Britain. Additionally, he is a member of the BC Information and Privacy Commissioner’s External Advisory Board.
In May 2018, Professor Goold was awarded the Alumni Award for Research by the Allard Law Alumni Association. This award is given to an individual who, while need not be an alumnus/alumna of the law school, has advanced the Faculty’s reputation as a leading research institution via his/her research achievements.
Watch Professor Goold's Alumni Award for Research video to learn more.