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Call for Papers: Intersectionality in Law, Policy and Society

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July 13, 2016

The Centre for European and Transnational Legal Studies, Queen’s University Belfast has published a call for papers for an international and interdisciplinary workshop for Postgraduate Research students.

    Intersectionality, applied to critical thinking and critical practice, has its roots in black feminism and a tradition in sociological studies. However, only after Professor Kimberle Crenshaw, a socio-legal scholar, coined the term intersectionality, did the concept gain wider recognition in academia as well as for guiding public policy and law. Today, the prevalence of austerity politics, the pushing of limits of law by social media and the many “phobias” entering public discourse, especially incited by notions such as “migrant crisis” invite a revisiting of intersectionality as theoretical and methodological framework for critical observation of the dynamic power relations and categories of inequalities. This is even more so in view of assessing the capacity of the law, as we know it today, to identify and to address intersectional inequalities.

    To this end, the conference organisers call on PhD researchers working with intersectionality to submit their papers and join them for a one-day workshop at Queen’s University Belfast. They hope to attract papers addressing some of the points listed below from interdisciplinary, and in particular socio-legal perspectives:

    • Intersectionality in the European Union and other International
      Organisations (with a focus on Europe), reflections in case law of
      courts and Human Rights bodies
    • Intersectionality, public spending and economic, social and cultural rights
    • Understanding of discrimination grounds and implications for law and legal and policy research
    • Law, power relations and social inequalities: austerity, “migrant crisis”, centrifugal forces in the EU
    • The relationship between policy, law and participation for the
      purposes of addressing intersectional inequalities in theory and/or in
      practice (examples from all parts of the world are welcome)
    • Cumulative/additive vis-à-vis or versus the intersectional inequalities & discrimination
    • Methodologies and  intersectionality with a focus on socio-legal studies

    Professor Sandra Fredman (University of Oxford) has agreed to give a key note speech

    Important dates and details

    • Conference venue: Queen’s University Belfast, United Kingdom, Lanyon Building, Canada Room
    • Date & time of conference: Wednesday, 26.10.2016, 13:00 – 17:00 hrs
    • Abstracts deadline: 31.07.2016
    • Complete papers deadline: 30.09.2016
    • Contact person: CETLS@qub.ac.uk
    • Participation fee: No fee
    • Funding support to travel and accommodation offered: No

    Abstracts of 250 words (maximum) should indicate the main argument and structure of the paper and the methods used, and be accompanied by a biographical note of no more than 5 lines. If accepted, you will receive the CETLS’s Guidelines for Authors and will be expected to deliver a full paper of no more than 8-10000 words by 30.09.2016.

    Publication of papers in the peer-reviewed CETLS Working Papers series is offered.