Spotlight on “Law’s A Drag” for LGBT+ History Month
The School of Law is proud to showcase Dr Rosie Fox and Dr James Greenwood-Reeves’ research network “Law’s A Drag” for LGBT+ History month.
Dr James Greenwood-Reeves and Dr Rosie Fox hosted the second "Law's a Drag" workshop and networking event on Monday 8th January 2024, bringing together a wide range of academics and local drag performers. The aim of “Law's a Drag” is to work alongside local drag artists to find out how legal academia can help identify, and create impactful research to improve, difficulties these artists face in their lived experience of law.
They secured strategic development funding from the School of Law in order to compensate artists for their time and expertise. Alongside drag artist co-hosts and academic guests from universities across the UK, they discussed a range of topics including contracts, harassment, insurance, policing, and more, and talked about how they can centre the voices of drag performers in the design and implementation of their research. They had previously hosted the inaugural "Law's a Drag" workshop in July 2023, and now they're building momentum towards planning a significant research project, with responsible and ethical research design in mind, in collaboration with their drag partners. They say:
Building the network has been an enlightening and empowering experience.
The "Law's a Drag" twitter/X account in particular gives some photos and details of how these events went. They are eager to grow the network and develop meaningful and interesting research with their drag artist partners!
Outside of these networking events, “Law's a Drag” has been sowing the seeds for their research in conferences both nationally and internationally. Dr Fox and Dr Greenwood-Reeves presented their paper ‘The jurisprudence of RuPaul’s Drag Race and The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula’ at the LSA Annual Meeting 2023, San Juan, Puerto Rico, in June 2023. Some of the thoughts on this paper can be found in their 2023 SLSA blog post. “Law's a Drag”, featuring Dr Fox alongside University of Durham's Joy Twemlow, also organised and ran a workshop on 'Crafting a Trans Sanctuary: a collective quilting workshop' at the Critical Legal Conference, Durham, 11th September. A significant motivation behind “Law's a Drag” is empowering and facilitating trans and gender-nonconforming artists, but also students and staff in academia.
Forthcoming events
Dr Greenwood-Reeves has been invited as a panellist for the annual Wolfenden Seminar at the University of Reading, Monday 26th February 2024. The focus of the seminar is the development by Frances Hamilton and Tahlia-Rose Virdee of an inclusive LGBTQ+ International Travel Tool. This electronic toolkit allows employers and Universities to devise specific policy and practice considering LGBTQ+ student and staff engagement with international travel. Dr Greenwood-Reeves, who participated in research during the Tool's development, has been invited to speak about his participation in that project, and on his experiences as a queer lecturer more broadly in academia.
They are members of the Centre for Law and Social Justice, and Dr Fox is Deputy Director for the Centre for Innovation and Research in Legal Education.
