The concluding conference of Kent’s Legal Materiality Research Network, co-convened by Kent Law School Senior Lecturers Dr Hyo Yoon Kang and Dr Sara Kendall and sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, will be held in London in January 2020.
Interdisciplinary scholars from around the world will gather for the final two-day conference on Thursday 9 and Friday 10 January to reflect on their unique perspectives of legal materiality.
The Network views law as being more than a collection of texts defining rules, decisions and judgments. It frames law as a form of power that operates over bodies and across spaces. Since its launch in January 2018, the Network’s aim has been to develop a deeper understanding of the materiality of law and to examine how law shapes and regulates people and the world around us. The Network has collaborated across disciplines to explore how artistic and political interventions can contribute to scholarship on law’s matters, media and materiality. Network members have explored how law is made and how law is changing in relation to new technologies.
The conference will enable network members to reflect on work they have undertaken collectively and individually towards developing, refining and critiquing notions of legal materiality. One such endeavour was an experimental application and discussion of legal materiality in the format of a special edited issue of the journal, Law Text Culture (Vol. 23, 2019) which will be presented and launched at the conference.
The Network comprises more than 40 scholars, including a further nine from Kent Law School:
- Dr Jose Bellido
- Anne Bottomley
- Professor Emilie Cloatre
- Professor Maria Drakopoulou
- Professor Emily Grabham
- Dr Connal Parsley
- Professor Amanda Perry-Kessaris
- Dr Gavin Sullivan
- Dr Nayeli Urquiza Haas
More information about the project – its objectives, events, blog posts, publications, resources and members – is available on The Legal Materiality Network website. You can also follow the Network’s latest news and developments on Twitter: @LawsMatters
More details about the conference are available on Eventbrite.
Picture credit: Alison Kendall Swearingen. Earth: Human: Life: Chemical: Alchemical | 2017 | Acrylic paint, imprinted fishing net, nails, Amaryllis belladonna (dried leaves, bulb skins, and pigments made from flower petals), drift plastic, paper, dirt | 36″ x 36″