October 2020
Socio-legal insights in the time of COVID-19:
- Home-making/unmaking during COVID-19: Professor Helen Carr, together with colleagues from the Kent’s Schools of History and Architecture, has been awarded £10,000 to research home-making/unmaking during COVID-19. Professor Carr is a co-investigator and the PI is Dr Ambrose Gillick.
- Informality in Times of COVID-19: Ruptures21 has published its first report entitled: ‘A new social policy: Informality as the norm, formality as the exception‘. Ruptures21 is an initiative of The IEL Collective which comprises a team of academics that includes Dr Luis Eslava and Professor Donatella Alessandrini.
- More Police State Powers to Fight COVID in Ireland? The Irish Parliament has just enacted the Criminal Justice (Enforcement Powers) (COVID-19) Act 2020. It confers extensive, draconian and unprecedented enforcement powers on members of the Garda Síochána. By Professor Dermot Walsh on the Criminal Justice Notes blog.
KLS research updates, publications and analysis:
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Research grants awarded this summer:
- Dr Luis Eslava and Professor Donatella Alessandrini: Informal Work and Public Health in Colombia: Targeted Regulation during the COVID-19 Global Emergency – £4993.79 – GCRF Emergency Response Fund
- Dr Emily Haslam and Dr Suhraiya Jivraj: Law and Everyday Memorialisations: Sir John Hawkins in Chatham – £1,632 – Society of Legal Scholars, Research Activities Fund
- Dr Kirsty Horsey: Surrogates’ views on traditional surrogacy: is it ‘different’? – £3,375 – Faculty Research Fund (internal)
- Dr Sara Kendall: Humanitarian Complicity in the Global Legal Order – £49,580 – Leverhulme Research Fellowship
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Professor Amanda Perry-Kessaris: Evidencing and Combatting Hate Crime in India: Concepts, Mindsets and Processes – £4,580 – Society of Legal Scholars, Research Activities Fund
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Professor Sally Sheldon (Co.I): Evidence base to inform health service configuration for abortion provision – £29,000 (Kent’s amount) – NIHR
- Dr Clare Williams: Reframing the econo-socio-legal: reimaging ways of doing, talking and thinking about legal and economic phenomena – £98,752 – SeNSS Post-doctoral Fellowship
- Fellow of Academy of Social Sciences: Professor Diamond Ashiagbor has been conferred the award of Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, the representative body of the social sciences in the United Kingdom. She was proposed for the Fellowship by the Academy itself, on the basis of “eminence and contribution to social science”.
- Policy recommendations to help ameliorate inequalities in global value chains: Professor Donatella Alessandrini and Dr Jeremmy Okonjo have produced policy recommendations for the regulation of international trade to help ameliorate inequalities in global value chains (GVCs). The recommendations come at the end of a one-year research project offering the first sustained legal analysis of the contribution made by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to the proliferation of GVCs and the unequal distribution of the economic value along the chains. Research for the project was funded by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship.A policy brief, entitled ‘Global value chains, trade and inequalities’, identifies three key questions to embed into the architecture of international trade regulation.
- The right to abortion and the international activism of Dr Gomperts: An article by PhD scholar Elena Caruso for Corriere Della Sera
- Our Favourite CRT: Gloria Anzaldúa: An article for the Critical Legal Thinking blog by Dr Luis Eslava
- Philip Leverhulme Prize in Law: Professor Emily Grabham, who champions an influential new field of scholarship on the relationship between law and time, has been awarded a £100k Philip Leverhulme Prize in Law.
- The airspace tribunal and the case for a new human right to protect the freedom to live without physical or psychological threat from above: An article by Professor Nick Grief for the journal Digital War. Abstract (extract): Established in 2018, the Airspace Tribunal is a people’s tribunal that is examining the case for and against the recognition of a proposed new human right to live without physical or psychological threat from above. Drawing on the Airspace Tribunal’s first two hearings in London and Sydney, this article explains the Tribunal’s purpose and discusses the nature of the proposed right, why it is considered necessary, how it should be created and how it could strengthen international humanitarian law. It contends that a particuarly compelling argument in favour of the proposed right’s recognition is the psychological impact on civilians of threats experienced from or through airspace. With further hearings planned in other parts of the world, the article concludes by emphasising that the Airspace Tribunal’s aim is to facilitate, continue and develop the vital conversation about protecting human dignity and promoting the universality of human rights in the face of growing threats to our existence.
- ‘The ICJ’s Judgments in the Marshall Islands Cases’: A chapter authored by Professor Nick Grief published in the book Nuclear Weapons and International Law: 3rd edition edited by Geoffrey Darnton (Durotriges Press, 2020)
- Ad Hoc Committee on a Bill of Rights: Honorary Professor Tom Hadden delivered a briefing to the Ad Hoc Committee on a Bill of Rights at the Northern Ireland Assembly on Thursday 8 October. Watch his presentation, entitled ‘What the Bill of Rights was intended to achieve for Northern Ireland’, again via NIAssembly.TV
- Zimbabwe faces rise of 1-party state: Dr Alex Magaisa is interviewed for an article published by Anadolu Agency, Turkey’s state-run news agency.
- Big Saturday Read blog by Dr Alex Magaisa
- Modern Law Review Scholarships 2020-21: PhD Scholar Maayan Niezna has been awarded a Modern Law Review Scholarship 2020-21
- Articles by PhD scholar Ewelina Ochab for Forbes online:
- UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship: Dr Gavin Sullivan has been awarded a highly competitive and prestigious £1.2 million UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Future Leaders Fellowship, one of the few awarded by UKRI to a legal scholar. Dr Sullivan’s fellowship – ‘Infra-Legalities: Global Security Infrastructures, Artificial Intelligence and International Law’ – allows him to lead an interdisciplinary team to examine how AI security, and the data infrastructures that sustain it, are reshaping global security law, rights and accountability and security decision-making. The project will focus on the use of AI in controlling the movements of ‘risky’ people and in countering terrorism and extremism online. It will run from 2021 – 2028.
- The Law of the List: UN Counterterrorism Sanctions and the Politics of Global Security Law: Dr Gavin Sullivan spoke about his new book, and about his research on global security infrastructures, in a talk via Zoom for the Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law at Edinburgh Law School on Thursday 15 October
- Heritage Crime and Archaeology: Expert speakers involved in the fight against trafficking of cultural property at local and international level led a roundtable discussion on the protection of archaeology against crime for a Kent Centre for Heritage webinar on Thursday 22 October. The event, organised by Dr Sophie Vigneron, featured presentations by Mark Harrison, Head of Heritage Crime Strategy at Historic England, Dr Karl Harrison, Lead Forensic Ecologist for Alecto Forensic Services Ltd, and Professor David Gill, Fellow of the Centre for Heritage. Click the link to watch it again on our YouTube channel.
- British Soldiers above the Criminal Law? The Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill completed its second reading in the House of Commons last week. It raises fundamental questions about the application of the rule of law to the actions of members of the British armed forces deployed on overseas operations in the past. By Professor Dermot Walsh on the Criminal Justice Notes blog.