A prize recognising outstanding socio-legal scholarship has been awarded to Kent Law School Professor Emily Grabham.
The 2018 Socio-Legal Article Prize, awarded annually by the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA), was presented to Professor Grabham last night at the SLSA 2018 conference dinner in Bristol.
Professor Grabham’s prize-winning article on ‘Time and technique: the legal lives of the 26-week qualifying period’ (published in Volume 45 of Economy and Society) follows the ‘legal lives’ of qualifying periods on family-friendly employment rights. Drawing on documentary research and interviews with policy experts, union activists and legislative drafters, it focuses on the formal qualities of qualifying periods, arguing that these legal technicalities conjure time and legal form as inextricable.
Last year, Professor Grabham was awarded the SLSA’s Socio-Legal History and Theory Prize for her book ‘Brewing Legal Times: Things, Form and the Enactment of Law’ (University of Toronto Press, 2016).
Professor Grabham’s research focuses on how concepts of time influence law. More specifically, on how thinking about time influences our ideas about what law should do. Working in collaboration with sociologist Dr Sian Beynon-Jones from the University of York, Professor Grabham has explored these issues through the international scholarly network Regulating Time: New Perspectives on Regulation, Law and Temporalities. The network, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, investigates how law and regulation are shaped by dominant concepts of time.
Professor Grabham, a Reader at the Law School, also has research interests in labour law, interdisciplinary perspectives on labour and value, and feminist legal theory. She is particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches to legal analysis, drawing on methods and perspectives from legal anthropology, feminist theory, science and technology studies, and critical legal theory.
Her three-year research project on Balancing Precarious Work and Care, investigated how women in precarious work experience ‘work-life balance’. It was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council under its Future Research Leaders scheme.
Professor Grabham has published widely on these themes in journals such as Australian Feminist Studies, Body & Society, Social & Legal Studies, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies and Canadian Journal of Law & Society.