PECANS 2016 Workshop: ‘My Body, my Property’: Autonomy and Relationality

The workshop aims to provide a collaborative space for working through ideas pertaining to these concepts and related themes.

This one-day workshop on embodiment, autonomy, and relationality is the annual meeting of the PECANS network, funded by the School of Law, University of Leeds.

It will coincide with the visit of Professor Catriona Mackenzie (Macquarie University, Sydney) to the School of Law, University of Leeds, with Professor Rosie Harding (Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham) also in attendance.

The provisional programme for the workshop is as follows:

10:30-11:00 Welcome and introductions

11:00-13:00 Pecha Kucha presentation session

Anat Greenstein (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Steve Graby (Centre for Disability Studies, University of Leeds), ‘Relational autonomy and disability: beyond normative constructs and post-structuralist deconstructions’

Amelia Benson (Birkbeck, University of London), ‘Contraception, heterosex discourse and bodily autonomy’

Jacqui Lovell (York St John University), ‘Body mapping and participatory video as an evaluation process that produced embodied experiences unaccounted for in the process’

Jess Mant (Centre for Law & Social Justice, University of Leeds), ‘Too much autonomy? Using Actor-Network Theory to understand the implications of legal aid reform for access to Family Justice’

Biye Gao (Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS), ‘Performative Bodies: Women's Reproductive Agency in Contemporary China’

Abeezar I Sarela (Centre for Law & Social Justice, University of Leeds), ‘Understanding the demands and boundaries of consent for medical care in the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK’

Kelly Jones (Manchester Law School, Manchester Metropolitan University), ‘Procuring and Using Foetal Tissue for Therapeutic Means’

Chris Dietz (Centre for Law & Social Justice, University of Leeds), ‘Governing legal embodiment: regulating access to body modifications’

13:00-15:00 Networking lunch

A long lunch will give participants the opportunity to make connections with one another, as well as with members of the Centre for Law & Social Justice and other researchers from around the University of Leeds.

15:00-17:00 Roundtable reading group session

Participants are asked to prepare for discussion of the following pieces (which can be requested, by email, from c.p.dietz@leeds.ac.uk) in advance of the workshop:

Catriona Mackenzie, 'Conceptions of the Body and Conceptions of Autonomy in Bioethics' in Jackie Scully, Laurel Baldwin-Ragaven, and Petya Fitzpatrick (eds.) Feminist Bioethics: At the Center, On the Margins (Johns Hopkins University Press 2010) 71-90

Rosie Harding, ‘Care and Relationality: Supported decision-making under the UN CRPD’ in Forthcoming in Rosie Harding, Ruth Fletcher, and Chris Beasley (eds) ReValuing Care in Theory, Law and Policy: Cycles and Connections (Routledge forthcoming 2017)

Helen Lewis, ‘From pornography to surrogacy, too few of us are ethical consumers of bodies’ New Statesman (London, 27 February 2016) 

17:00-17:30 Reflection on the day

Professor Mackenzie will be given the opportunity to reflect on the day.

17:30-18:00 Closing remarks