Dr Mary Synge has published widely on Charity Law and presented at various international conferences, often by invitation, including Montreal (2015), Michigan (2017), Wellington (2018) and Melbourne (2019). She was invited to participate in a Charity Commission Working Group on Charity and Politics (2017) and to give oral evidence to the House of Lords Special Public Bill Committee on the latest Charities Bill (2021). She has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Konstanz (2014) and University of Melbourne (2018).
Mary is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool, an Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne and a Charity Law Scholar in the International Charity Law Network, University of Notre Dame. A former solicitor at Linklaters, she was awarded a PhD by the University of Bristol and has held academic posts at the Universities of Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter and Reading.
Key publications
Book
Synge M, The ‘New’ Public Benefit Requirement: Making Sense of Charity Law? (Hart Publishing 2015)
Journal articles
- Synge M, ‘Universities: A Question of Charity’
- (2022) 16 Journal of Equity 103-113
- Synge M, ‘Regulation of Universities as Charities: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back’
- (2021) 41 Legal Studies 214-233
- Synge M, ‘Charity and the Myth of the Presumptions’
- (2017) 10 Journal of Equity 189-212
- Synge M, ‘Charitable Status: Not a Negligible Matter’
- (2016) 132 Law Quarterly Review 303-317
- Synge M, ‘The Attorney General and the Charity Commission: One Rule without Reason?’
- [2016] Public Law 409-417
- Synge M, ‘A State of Flux in Public Benefit across the UK, Ireland and Europe’
- (2014) 16 The Charity Law & Practice Review 163-188
- Synge M, ‘Independent Schools Council v Charity Commission for England and Wales
- (2012) 75 Modern Law Review 624-639
- Synge M, ‘Poverty: An Essential Element in Charity Law after all?’
- (2011) 70 Cambridge Law Journal 649-668
Book chapters
- Synge M, ‘A No-Benefit Benefit Test’ in M Harding and D Halliday (eds), Charity Law: Exploring the Concept of Public Benefit (Routledge 2022)
- Synge M, ‘Public Benefit Post-Pemsel’ in M Harding (ed), Research Handbook on Not-For-Profit Law (Edward Elgar 2018)
- Synge M, ‘Civil Society in England and Wales’ in Tymen J van der Ploeg, Wino J M van Veen and Cornelia V M Versteegh (eds), Civil Society in Europe: Minimum Norms and Optimum Conditions of its Regulation (Cambridge University Press 2017)