Kent’s Centre for Critical International Law (CeCIL) has released a recording of this year’s Annual Lecture in which Professor Susan Marks, from the London School of Economics, offers a critical exploration of dignity and its worldliness.

Professor Marks filmed her talk ‘Have you seen dignity?’ at Kent earlier this month (without an audience) after restrictions imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic meant the event could not proceed as originally planned.

Speaking also on behalf of Dr Sara Kendall who co-directs CeCIL with him, Dr Luis Eslava said:: ‘Having it recorded for online circulation was our way to express our solidarity with our friends and colleagues across the world who are facing, like communities in general, many challenges posed by the current crisis and who are searching for new ways to make sense of it.’

Professor Marks’s talk (the title of which is inspired by lyrics from the Bob Dylan song “Dignity”) begins by tracking the word dignity as it pops up in everyday life. She goes on to consider dignity within the context of academic writing across the disciplines of philosophy, legal scholarship, health and social care, sociology, and anthropology. Finally, she discusses the politics of dignity, indignity and indignation.

Professor Marks’s research is concerned with international law, human rights and the global political economic order. She is the author of The Riddle of All Constitutions, International Human Rights Lexicon (co-authored with Andrew Chapman) and A False Tree of Liberty. She is the editor of International Law on the Left. Her research seeks to bring insights from critical social theory to the study of international law and human rights.

CeCIL is an innovative research centre at Kent Law School which aims to foster critical approaches to the field of international law.