A new Collaborative Research Network (CRN) on International Law and Politics has been established with the support of academics from Kent Law School.
The CRN network has been organised by Kent Law Lecturer Dr Luis Eslava in collaboration with Dr Rose Parfitt from Melbourne Law School. Currently a McKenzie Post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities in Melbourne, Dr Parfitt will be joining Kent Law School in April 2016.
The network is comprised of a large number of multi-disciplinary junior and senior scholars, teachers, researchers and practitioners, all working on issues related to the politics of international legal thought, practice, method and history. Members from Kent Law School include Professor Amanda Perry-Kessaris, Dr Darren Dinsmore, Dr Donal Casey, Dr Donatella Alessandrini, Dr Emilie Cloatre, Dr Emily Haslam, Iain Frame, Dr Kate Bedford, Maria Drakopoulou, Dr Nikolas Rajkovic, Dr Sara Kendall and Professor Toni Williams.
Luis said: ‘From across the world, the work of the members of this impressive group of scholars manifests a diverse range of academic and political inclinations in the study of the international legal order. Their concerns range from practices of human rights and judicial activism to the development of Marxian, postcolonial, feminist and queer legal theory, and from the heterodox regulation of international finance and trade to the critical potential of international legal historiography and ethnography.’
The CRN has been added to an approved list by the Law and Society Association (LSA), an interdisciplinary scholarly organization committed to social scientific, interpretive, and historical analyses of law across multiple social contexts. A series of special launch events are planned to coincide with the LSA’s 2015 Annual Meeting in Seattle later this month. The new network has already successfully submitted sessions themed around the Politics of International Legal History for the Seattle meeting, including four panels and a roundtable.
The roundtable, which will serve as the main academic launch event for the CRN, will feature contributions from Maria Drakopoulou (Kent), Annelise Riles (Cornell), Chris Tomlins (Berkeley), Liliana Obregon (Los Andes), Mariana Valverde (Toronto) and Kamari Clarke (Pennsylvania). An evening reception, co-sponsored by Kent Law School, Melbourne Law School and the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School, will also be held to celebrate the launch.
Image: Umberto Boccioni [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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