Law, designed. Image (c) Amanda Perry-Kessaris, 2014.
Professor Amanda Perry Kessaris has been awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship to complete her project ‘Law and Design: A pragmatic approach’.
The main project output will be a book to be published by Routledge. This will develop a novel framework for exploring how, when, where, why, and by and for whom, designerly knowledge and techniques are and ought (not) to be used to address lawyerly concerns in legal research and practice.
The hope is that this book will act as a vibrant and resilient bridge between law and design disciplines, supporting the responsible advancement of thinking and practice in the field.
The project will draw on insights from original collaborative academic and social experimentation, including:
- Legal futures though The Horniman Museum and Gardens(ongoing) with Elen Stokes (funded by SLSA).
- Enlivening legal education through The Postal Museum(ongoing) with Emily Allbon and Susannah Coster, in partnership with The Postal Museum (funded by KLS).
- Design-driven approaches to policy-making on land use and ownership in Malawi (ongoing) with Cyprian Kambiliand Nebert Chirwa (funded by International Science Partnerships Fund.
- Bristol legal futures(2024) with Elen Stokes.
- String theory(2025)
- Edinburgh Legal Theory Bazaar(2023).
- Fantasy legal exhibitions(2023) with Victoria Barnes (funded by SLSA and KLS).
Professor Perry-Kessaris is a Fellow of the Design Research Society, elected in recognition of her pioneering work applying design-based methods to enhance legal research, education, and practice; and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, elected in recognition of her contributions to the development of integrated ‘econo-socio-legal’ approaches to understanding the economic lives of law.