Graduate Research Conference to explore who needs law

Graduate students will explore the question of who needs law at Kent Law School’s fourth annual interdisciplinary Graduate Research Conference in June.

Kent LLM students and postgraduate research students from across the humanities and social sciences faculties, will meet over two days on Monday 6 and Tuesday 7 June to discuss how law is embedded in other fields and how its interaction with other disciplines opens up new perspectives on who needs law.

As well as exploring whether the positioning of law is interconnected or isolated, the conference hopes to consider further questions such as:

Is law proactive or reactive?
Can it provide the means to claim and vindicate a person’s needs and desires on it own?
How do current affairs force us to reconsider the involvement of other disciplines in matters that may initially be conceived of as purely legal?
Does the legal outcome correspond to people’s aspirations?
Is compliance with the law always enough?
What resources can other disciplines contribute to the law and legal research?
How can law inform other disciplines?

The Law School’s Deputy Director of Graduate Studies Sinéad Ring said: ‘The conference brings all postgraduate students together in a sprit of supportive intellectual engagement. For Kent LLM students in particular, the conference is an important opportunity to gain feedback on their dissertation research. This year, the Graduate Conference Committee have put together a couple of sessions aimed solely at allowing Kent LLM students to present short papers of approx. 10 minutes, in which they will discuss their dissertation plans.’

All students are welcome to attend the conference which will be held in Eliot College on Kent’s Canterbury campus. Further details are available on the conference’s Facebook page and via the@KLSPGConference Twitter account.

It is hoped that papers from the Conference will be compiled into a special edition of the Kent Student Law Review.