The Future(s) of Social Justice: Celebrating the Centre for Law and Social Justice’s fifth anniversary year

Established in 2014 the Centre marks its anniversary with a series of exciting events to showcase its work and achievements over the past five years.

The Centre of Law and Social Justice brings together a range of expertise in research across social welfare, international and human rights law, and health law. The Centre marks its fifth anniversary year with a series of exciting and thought-provoking events reflecting its three research themes, exploring how emerging practices and knowledge claims impact how we understand and seek to advance social justice.

We kick off with a free Annual Public Lecture on Wednesday 23 October by Margaret Davies, Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor of Law at Flinders University, Australia. In this lecture, The Future(s) of Social Justice: Addressing Eco-Social Fragmentation and Rift, Professor Davies explores the connections between social and environmental justice, and offers some theoretical concepts to help diagnose and address some of the present and future problems of eco-social justice.

The next event takes place on the 19 November 2019, The Future(s) of Social Justice: Legal entitlements and problem solving for disabled people and their families. This event, co-hosted with the charity Cerebra, focuses on the School’s research programmes that address the barriers disabled people and their families encounter when trying to access legal entitlements. It also seeks to identify new areas where practical research is considered a priority by disabled people, their families and organisations. Full details will be published shortly. For further information please contact Ana Aiello.

On 11 December 2019 The Future(s) of Social Justice: Kinship and European Legalities explores the different forms social justice can take as families interact with the state. The speakers will show how notions of kinship, sexuality, care, but also capitalism and nationalism gets renegotiated in the daily experiences and battles for legitimation of queer, marginalised families. Antu Sorainen, University of Helsinki, will present ‘Queering Wills – Inheritance Arrangements in Sexually Marginalised Groups’ and Joanna Mizielinska, Polish Academy of Sciences, will present ‘Living in Uncertainty: Polish Queer Families and Their (Non)ordinary Strategies to Gain Recognition’. Full details will be published shortly. For further information please contact Marie-Andrée Jacob.

On 13 May 2020 The Future(s) of Social Justice: The Community and Social Care brings together leading researchers from health, law, social policy, and geography in order to provoke critical and radical thinking on the challenges facing social care. The panel will discuss issues including community care, disability, policy contexts, and the material and ideological conditions shaping and being shaped by social care debates at present. These insights and the discussions following them will lead to new trajectories for critical discourse and inquiry. For more information please contact Beverley Clough.

The final event in the series takes place on 4 November 2020. The Future(s) of Social Justice: Biology 2.0 brings together expertise from education, social research, criminology and law to explores the potential implications of the 'social turn' in the life-sciences – the different fields of inquiry that are increasingly exploring the role of the social environment in developmental processes. For more information please contact Michael Thomson.

All events are free and open to the public.

Read more about the Centre’s research themes.