April 2020: Research round-up including socio-legal responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

Expert, critical analysis of socio-legal issues in the time of COVID-19 from Kent Law School academics plus all the latest news of their research

By |

April 2020

Socio-legal insights in the time of COVID-19:

  • Social care regulation at Work: Research undertaken by Professor Lydia Hayes and her project team (in collaboration with UNISON in the North West of England) shows severe breaches in Health and Safety regulations for social care workers. Findings from a survey of 2,600 care workers employed in over 1,000 different care-settings reveal widespread fear about the transmission of SAR-CoV-2 virus and serious breaches of legal safety standards. A vast majority of care workers feel unprotected at work, they believe they will not be paid wages if they self-isolate and care workers are battling with the consequences of confusion at policy level about the use and availability of PPE. Read the news report online; the full report is available here; and visit the project website
  • Twitter thread by Professor Lydia Hayes addressed to @MattHancock, drawing attention to the Social Care Regulation at Work project recommendation that Government step in on public health grounds to ensure that care workers are paid their average wages when they need to self-isolate
  • Press coverage of Professor Lydia Hayes’s social care regulation research includes:
  • Making Sense of the Crisis: Who cares? Professor Lydia Hayes joined a panel for The People’s Assembly Facebook Live on ‘Making Sense of the Crisis: Who cares?’ on Thursday 30 April
  • Care Workers Don’t Need Badges, They Need Proper Sick Pay. New research shows that 80% of care workers believe they will lose wages if they self-isolate. The time for tokens is over – the government needs to act today to improve working conditions. By Hannah Walters, part of the Social Care Regulation at Work team led by Professor Lydia Hayes
  • Trident nuclear deterrent: Professor Nick Grief is among a group of signatories to a letter sent to all MPs, questioning whether the UK’s Trident nuclear weapon system should remain on ‘Continuous at Sea Deterrent patrol’ as the costs of COVID-19 spiral
  • Health and disability: On being haunted by your body – As some states restrict access to life saving medical treatment for COVID-19 in ways that exclude many people with disabilities, Dr Flora Renz questions our notions of health & disability and invites us to re-imagine society..
  • IEL Collective Conversations (the IEL Collective is a network of scholars dedicating to critically evaluating the theory, practice, and impact of international economic law)
    • International Economic Law and COVID-19: In this video by the IEL Collective, Dr Luis Eslava and Tara Van Ho (Essex Law & Human Rights Centre) discuss two issues stemming from the intersection of international economic law and the COVID-19 pandemic
    • Right to Food: In this video by the IEL Collective, Dr Luis Eslava talks to Dr Michael Fakhri (Oregon Law), the newly appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. Together with Clair Gammage (Bristol Law), and Annamaria La Chimia (University Nottingham School of Law), they discuss Dr Fakhri’s new mandate and the impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic on food and international trade.
  • Dr Luis Eslava comments on news that the US state of Missouri is suing China: “Missouri’s lawsuit is symptomatic of a wider and well-documented trend in the use of law as a political tool in the US and around the world.”
  • From an Italian hotel to a US state, coronavirus ‘lawfare’ takes off: Dr Luis Eslava’s expert comment features in this article published in The Guardian
  • Informal Work and Public Health in Colombia: Targeted Regulation during the COVID-19 Global Emergency: Dr Luis Eslava and Professor Donatella Alessandrini have been awarded almost £5,000 by the University’s GCRF Emergency Response Fund for a project titled ‘Informal Work and Public Health in Colombia: Targeted Regulation during the COVID-19 Global Emergency’. Their project will compile the first comprehensive database on the volume and characteristics of informal work in Colombia. This will focus on the size, diversity and localisation of informal work; the vulnerability of informal workers in sectors not covered by current isolation measures; and their localisation in COVID-19 hotspots, with a view to informing ongoing government and wider efforts to combat the spread of the virus
  • Humanity’s Catastrophe: Following Sylvia Wynter in the Age of Coronavirus an article by PhD legal scholar Anamika Misra for Critical Legal Thinking
  • Expert comment: What of human rights amid COVID-19? Sian Lewis-Anthony says: ‘…we may be witnessing a worsening of conditions for many of the poorest and most vulnerable in our communities, and an incremental increase in coercive powers of the state.’
  • Contract law, social force majeure and adjusting consumer credit contracts: On his CreditDebtandInsolvency blog, Professor Iain Ramsay considers the significance of initiatives implemented by the Financial Conduct Authority in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, particularly in relation to “thinking about and the teaching of contract law, and in particular the approach of the law to changed circumstances affecting contract performance”
  • Big Saturday Read: Beware of bribery in the name of charity by Dr Alex Magaisa

Research grants

  • Humanitarian Complicity in the Global Legal Order: Dr Sara Kendall has been awarded £49,000 from the Leverhulme Trust to undertake a research fellowship on the topic of ‘Humanitarian Complicity in the Global Legal Order’ during the 2020-2021 academic year
  • Informal Work and Public Health in Colombia: Targeted Regulation during the Covid-19 Global Emergency: Dr Luis Eslava and Professor Donatella Alessandrini have been awarded almost £5,000 by the University’s GCRF Emergency Response Fund for a project titled ‘Informal Work and Public Health in Colombia: Targeted Regulation during the COVID-19 Global Emergency’. Their project will compile the first comprehensive database on the volume and characteristics of informal work in Colombia. This will focus on the size, diversity and localisation of informal work; the vulnerability of informal workers in sectors not covered by current isolation measures; and their localisation in COVID-19 hotspots, with a view to informing ongoing government and wider efforts to combat the spread of the virus
  • Law and Everyday Memorialisations: Sir John Hawkins in Chatham: Dr Emily Haslam and Dr Suhraiya Jivraj have been awarded £1630 by the Society of Legal Scholars Research Activities Fund for a project titled ‘Law and Everyday Memorialisations: Sir John Hawkins in Chatham’. The project will investigate the commemoration of John Hawkins, England’s first slave trader, in the everyday landscape of Chatham. The aim is to understand the extent to which legal processes account for, or have contributed to, controversies surrounding historical figures and facilitated their commemoration, and uncover how different communities in Chatham understand this memorialisation
  • Evidencing + combatting hate crime in India: concepts, mindsets, processes: Professor Amanda Perry-Kessaris has been awarded £4,580 by the Society of Legal Scholars Research Activities Fund for a collaborative research project with Mohsin Alam Bhat and Joanna Perry titled ‘Evidencing and Combatting Hate Crime in India: Concepts, Mindsets and Processes‘. The project will conceptualise who reports, records and responds to hate crime in the Indian context and assess how this forms an actual/potential ‘system’. It will also use designerly strategies such as collaborative prototyping to co-create shared understandings of current hate crime reporting and recording, and to shift mindsets among civil society actors and impact-oriented academics.

Articles, books, blogs, chapters and expert contributions: