Penny Darbyshire is a Professor of Law at Kingston University, having been a lecturer, senior lecturer and reader at Kingston University since 1978. She is also an adjunct associate professor, University of Notre Dame, London Law Centre, and was a visiting lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley, from 1992 until 1993. She was a visiting fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge in 2005. She has a first degree in law, a master's degree in criminology and a Ph D in socio-legal studies.