Research Interests

Eddie’s research interests include comparative anti-discrimination law, human rights and rights critique, international refugee law, legal theory, prison studies, ‘culture’ and colonialism. Methodologically, he finds trans/ multi-disciplinary angles of law and anthropology, law and literature, law and psychoanalysis, critical race theory and queer theory quite helpful.

 Eddie’s current principal research project examines the ways in which Black Germans consider the concept of belonging in and to Europe vis-à-vis legal structures and logics of citizenship. It analyses the tension between conventional legal discourse and experiential modes of describing state violence, anti-discrimination legislation and immigration policies to arrive at a deeper understanding of the ways that laws affect the lives of self-identified Black Germans. Ultimately, it reveals specific counter-narratives to conventional thinking about Europe and its constituency, infusing legal readings with critical legal theory and psychoanalysis, in order to historically position and politically situate some of Europe’s least recognised legal subjects.

Eddie is presently researching comparative European anti-discrimination regimes. He is investigating the use of independent commissions as resistance to legal decisions. Eddie is also involved in on-going comparative examination of the nexus between forced migration and forced labour between 1800 and the present.