Kent Law School Professor, and Dean for Medway, Nick Grief, and Shona Illingworth of the School of Music and Fine Art, have been awarded £1,500 from the University’s Public Engagement with Research Fund (PERF) to consider the case for and against the recognition of a new human right.

Their project, entitled ‘The Airspace Tribunal’, will consider a new human right to protect the freedom to exist without physical or psychological threat from above. The PERF grant will support the project’s first high profile hearing in London next year. This forms part of a major research project called Topologies of Air, commissioned by the Wapping Project.

The Airspace Tribunal will involve representations from diverse fields including international law; human rights; earth and life sciences; technology; cognitive neuroscience; cultural studies; sociology; art; architecture; politics; theology; philosophy; environmental studies; and economics. It will incorporate lived experience and NGOs, uniquely integrating public engagement and interdisciplinary debate.

Professor Grief teaches Public International Law and EU Law at Kent Law School. His research interests include air and space law and human rights, especially the right to protest, conscientious objection to the payment of taxes for military purposes and the use of international law by protesters in UK courts. He also practises at the Bar from Doughty Street Chambers.

Shona Illingworth is a Reader in Fine Art and an artist who works across sound, film, video, photography, drawing and painting. Major works using moving image and/or sound, take the form of gallery based and site specific installation. Her work combines interdisciplinary research (particularly with emerging neuropsychological models of memory and critical approaches to memory studies) with publicly engaged practice.

PERF  supports high quality public engagement – sharing the benefits of research with the public – and is open to all academic staff at Kent.