Plenary Panel followed by Drinks Reception
Socio-legal Studies at a Watershed? A conversation
Introduction: Joanne Conaghan, Head of University of Bristol Law School
Lois Bibbings, University of Bristol
Ambreena Manji, Cardiff University
Carl Stychin, City University
Chair: Dave Cowan, University of Bristol
These are both depressing and exciting moments for socio-legal scholars. It feels like socio-legal scholarship and teaching are facing watershed moments, when the decisions we make will reverberate across space and time. We are asking ourselves again what, if anything, is novel about socio-legal studies and what can it offer. Within this big question, there are several further questions about the relation of the socio-legal with the global, between the post- and anti-colonial; about the relation between socio-legal and critical legal studies; and about how our research methods re-invent time. These questions have become ever-more pressing as we face a cliff-edge, in which the post-Brexit fantasists assume a perfect post-regulation world but one which appears also to produce a smaller world for UK socio-legal scholarship; and, at a more mundane level, as the regulators seek to re-shape UK legal education as a mechanical, insular discipline.
The plenary session and drinks reception are co-sponsored by the University of Bristol Law School and the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law.
Speaker Profiles
Plenary Panel: 17:15-18:45, Reception Room, Wills Memorial Building
Drinks reception: 18:45-20:00, Mezzanine and Great Hall, Wills Memorial Building
Joanne joined the University of Bristol Law School in August 2013 having previously taught at the Universities of Kent, Exeter and San Diego California. A graduate and postgraduate of St Hugh’s College Oxford, Joanne has written extensively about issues relating to gender and law and is widely recognized as a leading scholar in that field, both nationally and internationally. Her research standing is evidenced by the publication of her most recent monograph, Law and Gender (2014) in the prestigious Clarendon Law Series (OUP) and by her appointment as a Fellow of The Academy of Social Sciences (2011). Joanne is also co-editor of The New Oxford Companion to Law (with Peter Cane) (OUP, 2008) and served as Deputy Chair of the 2014REF law sub-panel, having previously served on the RAE2008 law sub-panel.
Joanne has considerable experience at all levels of university management and from 2008-2011, she was Head of the Law School at the University of Kent. She took up her position as Head of University of Bristol Law School in August 2014.
Professor Joanne Conaghan
Head of University of Bristol Law School
Dave Cowan studied law at Southampton, graduating in 1989. He worked as a Research Assistant at the Law Commission (1990-1991), before becoming a Lecturer at Southampton University (1991-1993); Sussex University (1993-1995); and then Bristol University (1995-) where he has been Professor of Law and Policy since 2003. He teaches Property Law and optional units, Housing Law and Policy and Rich Law, Poor Law. He is Director of the MSc (Socio-Legal studies) programme.
Dave's research is mostly socio-legal, and focuses on social theory and the housing system(s). His books include Homelessness: The (In)Appropriate Applicant(Dartmouth, 1997), Housing Law and Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2011), as well as co-authored books, The Appeal of Internal Review (Hart, 2003), Regulating Social Housing: Governing Decline (Glasshouse, 2005), and Great Debates in Property Law (Palgrave MacMillian, 2012, 2nd ed 2016). He is co-editor of a collection of essays, Exploring the Legal (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015, with Dan Wincott), which develops an argument about the uses of legality. His more recent work engages with modern histories of housing policy.
He is currently working on a book (with Helen Carr and Alison Wallace) with the working title Ownership, Narrative, Things, which develops an ethnographically oriented approach to the appreciation of property, ownership and tenure.
Dave has been successful in obtaining funding for his research. His most recent project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, concerned shared ownership. He has previously conducted and managed research funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Nuffield Foundation, ESRC, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
He was Vice-Chair of the Socio-Legal Studies Association from 2001-2003, and a member of the Civil Justice Council's Housing and Land Sub-Committee from 2000-2004. Dave was a Visiting Academic Consultant at the Law Commission, 2005-2007, working on projects concerning housing adjudication and compliance. He is currently a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Law and Society and an editor of Social and Legal Studies. He is also the series editor of the Palgrave MacMillan Socio-Legal Series.
Professor Dave Cowan
Professor of Law and Policy, University of Bristol
Ambreena Manji has held academic posts at the Universities of Warwick and Keele and has been a visiting fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town; and at Dar es Salaam Law School; a Global Teaching Fellow at Melbourne Law School; and Dame Lillian Penson Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.
Between 2010 and 2014, Ambreena was seconded to Nairobi as the director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa, a British Academy research institute governed by the Academy’s BASIS committee. Under her leadership, the Institute became known as a centre of excellence for work on legal and constitutional change in Eastern Africa.
Ambreena took up her post at Cardiff Law School in 2014. With John Harrington (also Cardiff Law School), she set up the Law School’s path-breaking Law and Global Justice Pro Bono Clinic which has worked on legal cases in Tanzania and Kenya and which provides students with the opportunity of law placements in Nairobi.
Ambreena will be President of the African Studies Association of the UK from 2018. She was a member its Fage & Oliver Book Prize panel in 2016 and represent the ASAUK on the Arts and Humanities Alliance. She serves on the Research Committee of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and on the Advisory Board of the Africa Research Institute. She is a member of the Editorial Boards of Social and Legal Studies, Feminist Legal Studies and Law and Humanities.
Professor Ambreena Manji
Professor of Law, Cardiff University
Professor Lois Bibbings is based in the Law School and is also a member of staff in the School of Social and Community Medicine (Centre for Ethics in Medicine) at the University of Bristol. She studied at Cardiff University as an undergraduate and postgraduate. Previously she worked at Cardiff and Liverpool Universities.
Much of her research focuses upon Law, Gender and History. She has written about violence, sexuality, medical law and ethics ('conscience', 'care', care and older people, abortion, gender) and the body as well as widening participation policy.
An interest in men, masculinities and history is reflected in her work on conscientious
objectors to military service. This was the subject of her first monograph Telling Tales About Men: Conceptions of Conscientious Objectors to Military Service During the First World War. Her second monograph, Binding Men: Stories about Violence and Law in Late Victorian England focuses upon five late nineteenth century legal cases involving different forms of male violence (child abuse, prize fighting, murder and cannibalism, sexual assault and 'wife torture'). She has recently conducted an experimental study of 'conscience', examining legal and ethical notions of the concept but also comparing them with what people mean when they talk about ‘conscience’. This is part of a wider project on 'conscience'. Her next book will examine the campaign to pardon soldiers executed during WW1 (the Shot At Dawn Campaign), focusing on social movements, pardoning and miscarriages of justice. She is also coordinating a project on the campaign for female suffrage with her colleague in the Law School, Gwen Seabourne.
She is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Law and Society, on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Gender-Based Violence, a member of the ESRC and AHRC Peer Review Colleges and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is a currently a University Research Fellow (2016-17).
Professor Lois Bibbings
Professor of Law, Gender and History, University of Bristol
Professor Carl Stychin joined City, University of London as Dean of The City Law School in December 2012. After completing his initial legal training in Canada, he articled at a large corporate commercial firm in Toronto followed by a judicial clerkship for Chief Justice Brian Dickson at the Supreme Court of Canada. He studied for a Masters in Law at Columbia Law School, and was part of the Associates in Law Program, which gave him the opportunity to teach Legal Research and Writing to first year JD students.
Professor Stychin began his academic career in the United Kingdom at Keele University (Lecturer, 1992-96; Senior Lecturer, 1996-98). He joined the University of Reading in 1998 as a Professor of Law. In over fourteen years at Reading, he pursued a varied career in research and teaching, and also held several management posts (Head of the School of Law, 2001-03; Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, 2003-05; Pro-Vice-Chancellor, 2005-08).
Professor Stychin is best known for his research on law, gender and sexuality, and he has published three monographs, co-edited three collections, and published numerous articles in the field. In addition, he has longstanding interests in tort law, law and popular culture, and he has edited a student 'text and materials' collection (now in its fourth edition, co-edited with Professor Linda Mulcahy) on Legal Methods and Systems. He is currently the editor of Social & Legal Studies: An International Journal, a role he has performed for many years.
Professor Stychin has a particular interest in professional regulation. He is a lay member of the General Chiropractic Council and he serves as lay Vice-Chair of the Qualifications Committee of the Bar Standards Board. In the past, he has served as one of two Chairs of validation panels for the Legal Practice Course on behalf of the Solicitors Regulation Authority. He is a former member of the Joint Academic Stage Board of the Bar Standards Board and Solicitors Regulation Authority. Prior to his appointment to the General Chiropractic Council, Professor Stychin served as a non-Council lay member of its Education Committee.
In 2014, he was made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in recognition of his contribution to the socio-legal study of gender and sexuality. In 2015, he was elected to the Executive of the Committee of Heads of University Law Schools, the representative body for UK law schools and their management.
Professor Carl Stychin
Dean of The City Law School, City University of London