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Past research projects

AHRC Copyright Research Network to Consider New Directions in Copyright Law

  • Project web site: AHRC Copyright Research Network to Consider New Directions in Copyright Law
  • Awarded to: Professor Fiona Macmillan
  • Dates: 2003-2006
  • Funded by: Arts and Humanities Research Council
  • Description: To establish an international, multidisciplinary network of scholars to consider new directions in copyright law. The core participants in the network were copyright scholars working across a range of different disciplines, including law, economics, politics and political economy, cultural studies, and social theory. With input from a range of copyright stakeholders, the network plays a leading role in stimulating international research and debate about the future of the copyright system.
  • Output: The project resulted in three annual international conferences, six workshops and a published collection (Edward Elgar) of six edited volumes based on contributors papers, New Directions in Copyright Law Volumes 1-6.

‘Citizenship and Democratic Legitimacy in the European Union’

  • Project web site: CIDEL
  • This EU-funded project was a joint research project between 10 partners in six European countries, co-ordinated by ARENA at the University of Oslo. Michelle Everson was one of the partners, assisted by Julia Eisner. The project involved researchers from political science, law, media research and sociology and focused on the prospects for a citizens’ Europe through analysing what kind of order is emerging in Europe. The particular concern was to take stock of the EU as a rights-based post-national union, based on a full-fledged political citizenship. Does the EU proceed along this developmental path, and if so, how far has it proceeded?
  • Output: Michelle and Julia focused on Constitution Making and Legitimacy. Three workshops were organised at the Universidad Zaragoza in Albarracín, 2003 (Deliberative Constitutional Politics in the EU); London, 2004 (Constitution Making and Democratic Legitimacy in the European Union); and Florence 2006 (Constitution Making and Legitimacy). The Making of the European Constitution: Judges and Lawyers Beyond Constitutive Power, published by Routledge-Cavendish in 2007, addressed the nature of EU constitutionalism and took stock of the current research on the Convention from a predominantly deliberative point of view.

Forensic Futures: Interrogationg Our Posthuman Future

  • Dates: 2005-2007
  • Awarded to:  Professor Patrick Hanafin (Birkbeck) and Professor Rosi Braidotti (Utrecht University).
  • Funded by: Leverhulme Trust
  • Description: The project examined the shifting boundaries between life and death in contemporary culture, and the ways in which the threshold between life and death has become increasingly political – in pro-life debates, in the management of reproduction, in debates regarding the right to die, and in the dispute regarding the fragile borders of the body politic. The project analysed the position of the contemporary subject, with special emphasis on issues of embodiment: i.e. how are bodies organised, and how do they organise themselves when the border between life and death becomes a crucial and intense cultural concern? In the light of recent political and theoretical events – such as the formation of internment camps, and the development of theories of embodied cognition – the aim of the project was to politicise the concept of life in opposition to a resurgence of neuroscientific, evolutionary and genetic technologies which have tended to ‘biologise’ politics.This award enabled Professor Braidotti to spend a total of 10 months in residence at the Law School between 2005 and 2007.
  • Output: As part of the project, Professors Braidotti and Hanafin organised two international conferences (Forensic Futures in 2006 and Ways of Dying, 2006), and one workshop on Law and Biopower in 2005. In addition Professor Braidotti gave a series of Leverhulme public lectures in 2006. Amongst the distinguished international speakers who took part in these events were Donna Haraway, Paul Gilroy, Nikolas Rose, Sarah Franklin, and Marina Warner. The project also led to the publication of an edited volume of essays entitled Deleuze and Law: Forensic Futures (Forthcoming Palgrave/Macmillan, 2009).

Law and Investor-State-Civil Society Relations

Law, Islam and Cultural Identity: towards a culture of moderation

  • Dates: 2006-2007
  • Awarded to: Dr Marinos Diamantides and Dr Adam Gearey (Birkbeck School of Law)
  • Funded by: The British Academy Small Research Grant
  • Description: Three day-long workshops were held in London, England in June/2006 hosted by  Birkbeck School of Law, University of London; in Cairo, Egypt in February 2007 hosted by the American University in Cairo; and  in Izmir, Turkey in August 2007 hosted by the Faculty of Business, Dokuz Eylul University. The workshops brought together lawyers and scholars based in Britain, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan and Israel. The focus was on recent debates about the nature of secular and sacred law, where Islamic law has received particular attention. The aim was to break down the crude opposition of a monolithic, pre-modern, Islam and post-modern politics. Papers were collected, edited and are currently being prepared for publication as an edited collection by Routledge/Cavendish. Independent reviewers of the book proposal have recommended its publication as 'timely and original' and noted the high quality of individual papers.