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Department of Law Staff Seminars

Please see the nearly complete schedule for this term below.

'Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge’ – book discussion (co-hosted by the School of Law Anti-racist working group, and an open event)

Panel: Foluke Adebisi (Law, Bristol), Beth W. Kamunge-Kpodo (Law, Reading), and Katie Bales (Law, Bristol)

  • Date: 8 February 2023
  • Times: lunch from 12:15 PM. Seminar from 12:45 PM to 2 PM.
  • Venue: in person, room 313 and possibly online
  • Chaired by Tanzil Chowdhury

A discussion of Dr Adbisi’s new book Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge. This book explores how the law is entangled in colonial thought and in reproducing ideas of commodification regarding bodies and space-time. It examines the ways in which we can use theories and praxes of decolonisation to produce legal knowledge for flourishing futures. An essential intervention into the meanings of decolonisation, this book explores how such an inquiry can inform teaching, researching, and practising law.

Privacy, Damages and the Concept of Loss (cancelled due to industrial action)

Jeevan Hariharan (Law, Queen Mary)

  • Date: 1 March 2023
  • Chaired by Hedi Viterbo

The English privacy tort, commonly known as ‘misuse of private information’, brings into sharp focus some of the most disputed issues in private law concerning damages. Privacy violations are unique because they rarely involve pecuniary losses and do not always align with conventional heads of non-pecuniary loss like distress. Courts are therefore confronted directly with controversial questions concerning the proper grounds for awarding substantial damages, and the relationship between legal rights and remedies. This paper demonstrates that the key to answering these questions and explaining damages in the privacy context is a better understanding of the concept of ‘loss’. I argue that loss refers to a reduction in individual welfare. Damages awarded in privacy claims for ‘loss of control of information’ are justified because interference with the core interest protected by the privacy tort reduces a person’s welfare, not because the infringement of a right is itself a type of loss.

How Do We Deliver Research-led Teaching?

Panel: Tanzil Chowdhury (Law, Queen Mary), Christina Perry (Law, Queen Mary), Isobel Roele (Law, Queen Mary)

  • Date: 15 March 2023
  • Chaired by Hedi Viterbo

The view is widely held that what sets studying law in a research-led university apart from doing this in other places is that our teaching is research-led. But many questions arise about what this really means:

  • How does this approach alter what is taught (in terms of both substance and skills) and the way that teaching is designed and delivered; and does it affect more nebulous things like the ethos, culture or purpose of our teaching? 
  • How much awareness do our students have of this dimension of their education and are they sufficiently brought into conversations about its implications for their learning?
  • Is there more we should or could be doing to make research-led teaching work across all of our module and law degrees?

In this session we bring together colleagues to talk about and reflect on these questions in relation to their own practice and experience. For this session we have chosen to focus on core UG modules since that may be where the challenges are greatest. But we would be very open to arranging further sessions on this topic if there is an appetite for this.

Human Rights and the Fluid Subject of Algorithmic Governance

Dimitri Van Den Meerssche (Law and Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Queen Mary)

  • Date: 29 March 2023

Details TBC.

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