The IILAH Podcast

In this episode, Associate Professor Tanzil Chowdhury (Queen Mary University of London) discusses his latest book project, examining the transformation of the British Constitution over the last century. Tanzil’s argument is that we cannot understand significant changes to the British constitution without understanding the broader historical developments in capitalist social relations and the significant social antagonisms that have occurred throughout the last 100 or so years. Capitalism is a totality of different social relations and processes oriented around the value form; different social relations (economic, but also political, legal, cultural, moral etc) which are all important to the reproduction of that social totality. Contrary to heteronomous theories of constitutional change (including some Marxist ones), this project seeks to understand constitutions (the different institutional combinations of state and social power, subject formations, forms of mediation and characterisations of legality) as having an internal relation with capitalist social relations. In that sense, constitutions cannot be abstracted from capitalist social relations and are in fact, as Tanzil argues, historically specific to capitalism. However, even though constitutions are internally related to capitalist social relations, that does not mean that capitalist societies are not fraught with all manner of tensions, contradictions and ruptures. This is not therefore a rigid economistic and deterministic theory of constitutional development, but one which takes seriously the historical distinctness of the legal form, constitutionalism, and the specific work they do (or not) in the reproduction of capitalist social relations. Constitutionalism operates at different levels within the contradictory totality of capitalist social relations. Changes to the British constitution are the results of specific forms of struggle over the reproduction of capitalist social relations. Tanzil sets out some examples of this theoretical approach, periodises the last century of the British constitution, and connects it to distinct historical forms of capitalist constitutionalism. This seminar was chaired by Dr Martin Clark.

The Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH) in collaboration with the Melbourne Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory (MDFLT/Forum) were pleased to host a launch of 'Beyond Doctrine: Alternative and Critical Approaches to Law' at Melbourne Law School. 'Beyond Doctrine' provides an authoritative and thoughtful introduction to different legal methodologies and situates those methodologies in an Australian context. Edited by Harry Hobbs and Jeremy Patrick, it includes contributions from an impressive array of Australian scholars covering theories that ask us to think more deeply about law and what it means. On the evening of 24 November 2025, Earn Asanasak was joined by chapter authors Professor Heather Douglas, Professor Ann Genovese, Dr Claerwen O’Hara and Dr Alice Palmer to discuss their contributions to 'Beyond Doctrine' and insights into the collaborative venture of an edited volume on legal theory. Speakers in order of appearance: Dr Alice Palmer, Earn Asanasak, Dr Claerwen O'Hara, Professor Ann Genovese and Professor Heather Douglas. This event happened in parallel with the launch of 'Beyond Doctrine' in Sydney at the UNSW Legal Education Research Conference also in November 2025.

In this episode, Dr Ellycia Harrould-Kolieb (Faculty of Science, University of Melbourne) Professor Karen N Scott (University of Canterbury) and Professor Margaret Young (Melbourne Law School) shared reflections on their experiences at the 2025 United Nations Oceans Conference (UNOC3). The United Nations Oceans Conference in Nice, France, was a five day event in June involving more than 60 heads of states and governments and over 15,000 participants. Its published outcome, the ‘Nice Ocean Action Plan’ comprises a political declaration (A/CONF.230/2025/L.1) and voluntary commitments which seek to address the grave state of ocean health. Calls to expand marine protection, curb pollution, regulate the high seas, and unlock financing for vulnerable coastal and island nations were advanced in this third summit, dubbed UNOC3, which followed previous conferences in New York (2017) and Lisbon (2022). Alongside the ‘blue zone’ of government delegations and the ‘green zone’ of civil society engagement were side-events in universities and other organisations. The three speakers of this episode – academics in Australia and New Zealand – attended UNOC3 in various research capacities and present their reflections and critical perspectives. This event was organised by the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH), Melbourne Climate Futures (MCF), the International Law Association (Australian branch) and the Oceans and International Environmental Law Interest Group (OIELG) of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law (ANZSIL).

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered its long-awaited Advisory Opinion on the obligations of States in respect of climate change on 23 July 2025. In this episode, Melbourne Law School experts Dylan Asafo, Rohan Nanthakumar, Professor Jackie Peel and Professor Margaret Young discussed the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion and its implications for international law. The ICJ is expected to provide legal clarity on two questions: (a) the obligations of States under international law to ensure the protection of the climate system from greenhouse gas emissions, for States and for present and future generations; and (b) the legal consequences of these obligations for the States that have caused significant harm to the climate system, especially with respect to (i) injured or particularly vulnerable States such as small island developing states; and (ii) current and future generations. This event was co-hosted by IILAH, the Melbourne Centre for Law and the Environment (MCLE), Melbourne Climate Futures (MCF), the Laureate Program on Global Corporate Climate Accountability and the Oceans and International Environmental Law Interest Group (OIELG) of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law (ANZSIL).

In this episode of the IILAH Podcast, Professor Karin van Marle (University of Western Cape) presents on five concepts and explores how they relate to each other and how they could contribute to a jurisprudence beyond law. This seminar was chaired by Professor Ann Genovese. As legal scholars/ academics engaged with legal issues, or to follow Shaun McVeigh and Ann Genovese, as jurisprudents, we work with many concepts, ideas and traditions. Professor Karin van Marle is currently trying to bring five concepts (linked to ideas and traditions) that she has worked on over three decades together in a short monograph. There concepts are slowness; refusal; limit(s); transformation and space(s). The aim of Karin's presentation is to unpack the five concepts mentioned above, how they relate to each other and how they could contribute to a jurisprudence beyond law.

In this episode, Dr Daniel McLoughlin (UNSW) presents on Giorgio Agamben’s Covid Critique and the Homo Sacer Project. This seminar was chaired by Dr Richard Joyce. On the 26th of February 2020, Giorgio Agamben published a short piece on his personal website, entitled ‘Invention of an Epidemic,’ which argued that the Italian state was exploiting the appearance of COVID-19 to govern by emergency decree. Over the following year, he went on to criticise the use of masks, compared the “Green Pass” to the Yellow Star, and argued that academics teaching online were the “perfect equivalent” of Nazi collaborators. Agamben’s work has been enormously influential in critical legal theory over the past two decades. However, these interventions generated a great deal of criticism, with commentators accusing him of peddling “critical-cum-conspiracy theory,” and urging us to “forget about Agamben.” This paper analysed Agamben’s interventions around the pandemic and their relationship to his philosophical critique of law and politics. It argued that they illustrate limits to his analysis of sovereignty and his concern with the politics of totalitarianism, as they have the potential to play into a politics that presupposes a virtuous liberal status quo that has been lost and needs to be restored. There are, however, two aspects of Agamben’s thought in the Homo Sacer project that mitigate against this conceptual danger: his deconstruction of the concepts that underpin the legitimacy of the modern democratic state; and his analysis of the relationship between liberal democracy, biopolitics, and governmentality. Daniel McLoughlin’s claim is that these issues, taken together, have generated the much-noted proximity between Agamben’s critique of the response to COVID, and that of the far right.

In this episode, Alofipo So’oalo Fleur Ramsay and Professor Stewart Motha present on climate justice and insurgent lawyering in the International Court of Justice and beyond. This seminar was chaired by Professor Margaret Young. Climate destruction and dispossession is having its greatest impact on small island communities and nations. In December 2024 the ICJ held oral hearings in its Advisory Opinion on Climate Change. Drawing on experiences in Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Vanuatu and beyond – this seminar examined the strategies and techniques of insurgent lawyering deployed in the ICJ process and in other courts and tribunals. While the dominant emitters of GHGs have sought to narrow the ambit of applicable international law to the United Nations Framework Agreement on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement – island states have pushed for the application of the full corpus of international law. The nature of loss, damage, and harm; the historical and future obligations of states, and the status of indigenous cosmologies are what is at stake in climate litigation. What legal strategies redeem marginalised peoples and their knowledges?

The Institute for International Law and the Humanities was pleased to celebrate the publication of Associate Professor Anna Arstein-Kerslake's book, 'The Right to Legal Personhood of Marginalised Groups'. Anna was joined in conversation with Dr Erin O'Donnell and Associate Professor Olivia Barr. Professor Margaret Young chaired this event. The right to legal personhood has been enshrined in human rights law since its inception with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. However, the right has been largely overlooked. This book explores the marginalisation occurring as a result of barriers to the right to legal personhood and how this can be rectified. It analyses the right in relation to disability, gender, indigenous people, racial minorities, migrant groups, and stateless people. It presents a legal argument for the protection of the right and a normative analysis of the importance of the right in achieving equality in socio-legal systems

This episode of the IILAH podcast captures the discussion at 'Queer Connections: A Triple Book Launch', where speakers celebrated and drew out the connections between three recent edited volumes focused on queer approaches to law: - Nuno Ferreira, Maria Federica Moscati & Senthorun Raj (eds), Queer Judgments (2025, Counterpress) - Claerwen O’Hara and Tamsin Phillipa Paige (eds), Queer Engagements with International Law: Times, Spaces, Imaginings (Routledge, 2024) - Tamsin Phillipa Paige and Claerwen O’Hara (eds), Queer Encounters with International Law: Lives, Communities, Subjectivities (Routledge, 2024) 'Queer Judgments' brings together scholars, lawyers, and activists from around the world who are interested in re-imagining and re-writing legal judgments by using queer and related critical perspectives. This edited collection has an international reach and multidisciplinary scope, and takes the reader through 26 judgments and commentaries on various legal fields: from crime and sodomy cases to privacy and discrimination cases, from family and parenthood cases to health and reproduction cases, and ending with asylum and migration cases. Queer Judgments is intended to be a teaching, research, and advocacy resource for anyone interested in critical perspectives on jurisprudence, queerness, and social justice. 'Queer Encounters with International Law' and 'Queer Engagements with International Law' are sibling edited books, which apply insights from queer theory to a range of new issues and topics in international law. Queer Encounters explores new issues relating to gender, sexuality and LGBTIQ communities in international law, such as recent contestation over the definition of ‘gender’ in international criminal and human rights law and the possibility of building an international queer abolitionist movement. Queer Engagements moves beyond queer theory’s site of origin by applying queer theory to a range of new topics international law not directly related to gender and sexuality, including international environmental law, international space law, international heritage law and travaux préparatoires. Speakers included: Dr Senthorun (Sen) Raj, Dr Claerwen O'Hara, Professor Di Otto, Dr Julia Dehm, Dr Danish Sheikh and Sarah Ward.

The Concept of International Law Reform and the Case of Negotiated Settlements in Foreign Bribery Matters In this episode of the IILAH Podcast, Dr Radha Ivory presented on the topic of international law reform and the case of negotiated settlements in foreign bribery matters. This seminar was chaired by IILAH member and ANZSIL President, Professor Alison Duxbury. The concept of reform is present in its absence in the literature on international lawmaking and legal theory. The international legal system is subject to pressures for change. Its actors respond to those pressures with projects for legal improvement. Scholars comment on those malfunctions and attempted fixes, some elaborating general frameworks for appraisal, others conceiving of transnational law-making processes and yet others deconstructing the very discourse of international legal progress. However, as a group, international lawyers have baulked at the concept of reform. That aversion has been attributed to our discipline’s defensive posture and the international legal system’s lack of machinery for efficiently replacing outdated principles and rules. ‘Reform’ implies an admission of deficit and an orderly and authoritative change process that would not seem to be in keeping with typical pathways of legal change beyond the state. This article seeks to reverse that trend by proposing a two-part concept of international law reform. The procedural part of that concept enables legal scholars to discern and describe instances of quasi-legislative change in the international legal space. The substantive part prompts them to select and apply criteria for assessing the merits of a particular textual change or proposal. The resultant concept of international law reform is necessary, Radha argues, in a legal system that lacks centralised legislative processes and comprehensive rules for demarcating and legitimating authoritative normative developments. Through a detailed case study from international anticorruption law, the article shows how international law reform is an essential framework for analysis. Radha's published paper can be read here: https://academic.oup.com/ejil/article/35/4/867/7930301

In the episode of the IILAH Podcast, Professor Harro van Asselt (University of Cambridge) presents on the topic of phasing out fossil fuels under international law. This seminar was chaired by Professor Margaret Young and co-hosted with the Melbourne Centre for Law and the Environment. At the UN Climate Summit in 2023, the fight over a fossil fuel phase-out took centre stage, resulting in a decision calling on countries to ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels. Professor van Asselt first examined why there have been growing calls for a fossil fuel phase-out, and why international law should play a role in governing the transition away from fossil fuels. Next, he discussed the international regulation of phasing out fossil fuels, focusing on climate change law, human rights law, and investment law. Lastly, he explored options for reform, including through the international climate change regime as well as through a proposed fossil fuel treaty.

In this episode of the IILAH Podcast, Daniel Quiroga-Villamarin, presents on his book project, 'Architects on the Better World'. This seminar was chaired by Dr Laura Petersen. Even before the Unitedstatesean President Truman urged the attendants of the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization to see themselves as “architects of the better world,” the field of global governance has proven to be a fertile ground for metaphors drawn from architecture. Indeed, in the collective imagination of practitioners and scholars alike, the international legal order appears as a vast and towering edifice: a veritable “architecture” that overlooks “areas” of governance sustained by normative “pillars.” But international law’s castles, of course, were not built solely in the air. For the metaphorical use of architectonical language only hides international law’s profound lack of engagement with the material and concrete spaces in which the “international” is produced, contested, and disputed. Conversely, my book project, takes the “architecture of international cooperation” as a relevant question for international legal history. Instead of taking purpose-built environments for granted, I trace the birth of what I call the “international parliamentary complex” during international law’s “move to institutions” in the short twentieth century (1919-1998). With this, I refer to the emergence of buildings that claimed to serve as “international parliaments” throughout this period —especially those linked to universal or regional International Organizations. I follow this arc from “interwar” Geneva to the end of the Cold War, studying the ways in which this tendency to “parlamentarize” interpolity relations has mutated throughout the century. I do so by drawing from multilingual archival materials related to buildings erected in Geneva, New York City, Bogotá, Addis Ababa, Vienna, and Rome. By historicizing space and spatializing history, I explore the intersections between international law, democracy, and architecture in our unending quest to construct a just, and hopefully “better,” international order.

In this episode, Dr Kathleen Auld presents on the WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies. The adoption of the WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies (AFS) in 2022 was hailed by many as a triple win for environment, development, and trade. The idea of a ‘triple win’ is not unique to the WTO and reflects the broader rhetoric around sustainable development. Yet the idea of facilitating environmental and social protection through trade liberalisation is in stark contrast to the traditional practices of trade bodies. Trade agreements, if they include environmental and social protection at all, generally do so to offset the negative externalities caused by greater liberalisation of trade. The bans on fisheries subsidies implemented by the AFS and regional trade agreements like the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), thus represent an interesting case study on whether complementarities between trade, environment, and development goals are possible and realistic. The presentation focuses on the AFS and its potential real-world impacts, to understand if the idealistic vision of a triple win has materialised, or if ongoing negotiations will need to do more to realise this ambition. The episode is an edited recording of a seminar presented on 6 November 2024, chaired by Professor Margaret Young and co-hosted by the Institute for International Law and the Humanities and the Melbourne Centre for Law and the Environment. Dr. Kathleen Auld is a Lecturer in Ocean Sustainability, Governance, and Management within the World Maritime University’s Masters in Maritime Affairs programme. Dr. Auld’s research focuses primarily on sustainable fisheries and oceans as well as the relationship between trade and fisheries. Her particular research interests include IUU fishing, socio-economic aspects of fishing and ocean governance, and fisheries subsidies.

On Wednesday 31 July 2024, the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH) at Melbourne Law School hosted a panel discussion examining the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on the Legality of Israel’s Occupation of Palestinian Territory. The panellists: Dr Adil Hasan Khan (Chair) - Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow, MLS Dr Sophie Rigney - Senior Lecturer, RMIT Mr Haris Jamil - PhD Candidate, MLS Dr Julia Dehm - Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University Dr Ntina Tzouvala - Associate Professor, ANU Dr Shahd Hammouri - Lecturer, Kent Law School

On Wednesday 17 July 2024, the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH) at Melbourne Law School, hosted a seminar chaired by IILAH Director, Professor Margaret Young, and presented by Associate Professor Daniel Joyce (UNSW Sydney). This episode explores the ways in which private actors like Facebook (now re-branded Meta) are responding to criticism by turning to human rights. These platforms have been enabled by a techno-libertarian form of freedom of expression and international law’s failure to capture economic dimensions such as monopoly and taxation in approaching questions of information governance. Responding to the resulting scandals, the platforms have sought to blend pre-existing self-governance structures with procedures and regulatory concepts drawn from international human rights law. For example, Meta’s Oversight Board now embraces a form of rights-based decision making in reviewing online content decisions. This episode examines the stakes involved for human rights and media governance when they become so associated with private power. To do so, this critique of the Oversight Board engages with aspects of Cornelia Vismann’s media theory including her approach to law as a cultural technique.

This podcast captures the conversation between Dr Alice Palmer and Professor Gerry Simpson at the launch of Alice's new book 'Natural Perception: Environmental Images and Aesthetics in International Law'. Professor Margaret Young introduces the conversation and provides a brief summary of the event. The Institute for International Law and the Humanities and the Melbourne Centre for Law and the Environment were pleased to celebrate the publication of Dr Alice Palmer's new book at the launch on Monday 8 April 2024. Alice was joined in conversation with Professor Gerry Simpson, author of 'The Sentimental Life of International Law' and Professor of Public International Law at LSE Law School. They discussed the whys, hows and wheretos of seeing environmental images in international legal process.

In this episode, Julian A. Hettihewa presents on ‘The Principle of Distinction in International Humanitarian Law’. According to the principle of distinction, the parties to a conflict shall at all times distinguish between civilians and combatants. Described as one of the cardinal principles of international humanitarian law, the principle thus requires that civilians are never made objects of attacks. Underneath these seemingly objective and neutral concepts are real human beings. Available data indicates that the vast majority of victims of direct conflict are young men. Against this background, this talk seeks to examine the relevance of the principle of distinction for young people. It suggests that youth as a social category is constructed by international law as dream/nightmare and that this may inform decisions on targeting. The talk concludes with an invitation to use existing critical approaches to explore further areas of international law with a sensibility for young people and youth. The episode is an edited recording of a seminar presented on 5 December 2023, chaired by Dr Carrie McDougall and hosted by IILAH. Julian A. Hettihewa is a research assistant and PhD candidate at the Institute for Public International Law, University of Bonn. His research focusses on the relationship between youth and international law and forms part of what may be called Young Approaches to International Law.

In this podcast on ‘The Role of International Law in the Rise of Populism’, Professor Margaret Young (IILAH Director, Melbourne Law School) and Chair Dr Alice Palmer (IILAH Program Director, Melbourne Law School) are joined by Professor Peter Danchin, University of Maryland Carey School of Law, and Professor Jolyon Ford, ANU College of Law. This seminar addresses work being undertaken as part of a 2022-26 Australian Research Council Discovery project on “Reconceiving Engagement with International Law in a Populist Era” that seeks to address the fundamental problem of how to reconceive engagement by states with the international legal order in the face of a sustained populist backlash. The chief investigators are Professors Jeremy Farrall and Jolyon Ford and Associate Professor Imogen Saunders from ANU College of Law and partner investigators Peter Danchin from the University of Maryland and Shruti Rana from Indiana University.

In this episode, Dr Ben Golder (UNSW Law School), Dr Kathleen Birrell (La Trobe Law and Humanities Network) and Professor Sundhya Pahuja (Melbourne Law School) are joined by Associate Professor Tim Peters (UniSC School of Law and Society) to discuss applying for grants for law and humanities research. Associate Professor Tim Peters is a critical and cultural legal scholar based in the School of Law and Society of the University of the Sunshine Coast . His research interests operate at the intersections between legal theory, theology and culture.

In this episode, Dr Ben Golder (UNSW Law School), Dr Kathleen Birrell (La Trobe Law and Humanities Network) and Dr Adil Hasan Khan (Melbourne Law School) are joined by Manav Kapur (Princeton University) to discuss Archival research in the South. Manav is based in the Department of History at Princeton University.

In this episode, Dr Ben Golder (UNSW Law School), Dr Kathleen Birrell (La Trobe Law and Humanities Network) and Professor Sundhya Pahuja (Melbourne Law School) are joined by Associate Professor Connal Parsley (Kent Law School) to discuss working with other fields and across disciplines. Connal is Reader in Law and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. He graduated from the University of Melbourne with degrees in linguistics and law, before practising commercial property and constitutional and administrative law in the Melbourne offices of the Australian Government Solicitor (AGS). An interdisciplinary legal scholar, his research is grounded in critical legal studies, cultural studies, and the humanities, emphasising the need to reinvent central aspects of the legal tradition through new creative and intellectual resources. He has been visiting fellow at the Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa, Italy), the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing (Berkeley, USA), and Melbourne Law School (Australia).

In this episode, Dr Ben Golder (UNSW Law School), Dr Kathleen Birrell (La Trobe Law and Humanities Network), Professor Sundhya Pahuja (Melbourne Law School) and André Dao (Melbourne Law School) are joined by Associate Professor James Parker (Melbourne Law School) to discuss Non-traditional Research Outputs. James is the Director of a research program on Law, Sound and the International at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH). His research focuses on the relations between law, sound and listening, with a particular emphasis on international criminal law, the law of war and privacy. James’ published research includes a book exploring the trial of Simon Bikindi, who was accused by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda of inciting genocide with his songs, articles and book chapters on the judicial soundscape, the gavel and the weaponisation of sound. He is currently working on the socio-legal history of eavesdropping and putting together an edited collection entitled Acoustic Justice.

In this episode, Dr Ben Golder (UNSW Law School) and Dr Kathleen Birrell (La Trobe Law and Humanities Network) are joined by Danish Sheikh (Melbourne Law School) to discuss the art of the conference presentation. Danish Sheikh is a playwright, activist lawyer and legal researcher. He is currently working on a thesis exploring queer dissent as a form of reparative jurisprudence at the Melbourne Law School. His work has been cited by the Supreme Court of India in its decision to decriminalize homosexuality in 2018. His current research has won the Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia's Postgraduate Essay Prize and the Melbourne Law School Student Published Research Prize. His first book, Love and Reparation was published by Seagull Books and distributed by University of Chicago Press in 2021.

In this episode, Dr Ben Golder (UNSW Law School), Dr Kathleen Birrell (La Trobe Law and Humanities Network) and Professor Sundhya Pahuja (Melbourne Law School) are joined by Rebecca Croser (Melbourne Law School) to discuss how to successfully edit your own work. Rebecca is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing in the Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne and Research Officer in the Melbourne Law School. She has taught undergraduate Creative Writing and has supervised honours and masters students' thesis. Rebecca also edits books and journal articles for academics whose first language is not English.

In this episode, Dr Ben Golder (UNSW Law School) and Dr Kathleen Birrell (La Trobe Law and Humanities Network) are joined by Professor Margaret Davies (Flinders University) to discuss how to balance breadth and depth. Margaret Davies is Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor and Research Professor in legal theory in the College of Business, Government, and Law at Flinders University. She is the author of six books, the most recent of which is EcoLaw: Legality, Life and the Normativity of Nature (2022).

In this episode, Dr Ben Golder (UNSW Law School), Dr Kathleen Birrell (La Trobe Law and Humanities Network) and Professor Sundhya Pahuja (Melbourne Law School) are joined by Ntina Tzouvala (ANU College of Law) to discuss peer review. Ntina Tzouvala is an associate professor at the ANU College of Law a Global Fellow at the NUS Centre for International Law. Her work focuses on the history, theory and political economy of international law. Her first monograph, Capitalism as Civilisation: a History of International Law (Cambridge UP, 2020), was awarded the ASIL Certificate of Merit for a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship and the Australian Legal Research Award (ALRA) in the book category.

In this episode, Dr Ben Golder (UNSW Law School), Dr Kathleen Birrell (La Trobe Law and Humanities Network) and Professor Sundhya Pahuja (Melbourne Law School) are joined by Dr Shane Chalmers (Adelaide Law School, The University of Adelaide) to discuss how to successfully edit a collection. Shane's research examines law from disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. It shares a critical concern with the legacies of European colonialism for laws and societies today, investigated through a combination of cultural analysis and historical enquiry. Shane's work has contributed to the sub-fields of law and colonialism, law and development, law and art, and jurisprudence, through publications in journals including Law and Critique, Social & Legal Studies, Law & Social Inquiry, Humanity, Griffith Law Review, Law & Literature, and Law, Culture and the Humanities.

In this episode join Sundhya Pahuja and Shaun McVeigh in conversation with Cait Storr to launch her book titled ‘International Status in the Shadow of Empire: Nauru and the Histories of International Law’. Book Description: Nauru is often figured as an anomaly in the international order. This book offers a new account of Nauru’s imperial history and examines its significance to the histories of international law. Drawing on theories of jurisdiction and bureaucracy, it reconstructs four shifts in Nauru’s status – from German protectorate, to League of Nations C Mandate, to UN Trust Territory, to sovereign state – as a means of redescribing the transition from the nineteenth century imperial order to the twentieth century state system. The book argues that as international status shifts, imperial form accretes: as Nauru’s status shifted, what occurred at the local level was a gradual process of bureaucratisation. Two conclusions emerge from this argument. The first is that imperial administration in Nauru produced the Republic’s post-independence ‘failures’. The second is that international recognition of sovereign status is best understood as marking a beginning, not an end, of the process of decolonisation.

In this episode Dianne Otto was joined by Oishik Sircar to discuss his recent publication. 'Violent Modernities: Cultural Lives of Law in the New India' (OUP 2021)uses a critical legal perspective to show that law and violence in the postcolony share a deep intimacy, where one symbiotically feeds the other. Researched and written between 2008 and 2018, the chapters study the cultural sites of literature, cinema, people's movements, popular media and the university to illustrate how law's promises of emancipation and performances of violence live a life of entangled contradictions.

In this Festival of Conversations episode Professor Hilary Charlesworth was joined in conversation with Professor Anne Orford to discuss the founding of IILAH in 2005 and the shifting relations between international law and the humanities.

Panelists engaged in a live online conversation about art-based methods in legal scholarship, teaching and practice, inviting the audience to participate in an interactive discussion about 'art', 'law' and the 'and' between. With Alice Palmer , Ruth Buchanan, Sara Ramshaw and Sean Mulcahy. At 43:13 the audience watched Ruth Buchanan's video essay 'Local Hero' this is accessible here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wl2YeSVcmU.

McVeigh and Gaita discuss the relations between morality, law and politics. Gaita has argued in, amongst other places, his contributions to 'Who’s Afraid of International Law', (which he edited with Gerry Simpson) that morality, law and politics are distinctive forms of the ethical and that, as seen from a particular ethical perspective in the Western tradition, each is sui generis. He does not equate the ethical with morality. He believes that law and politics are answerable to morality, but not reducible to it in their ethical dimensions. To see morality, law and politics as different forms of the ethical, he has argued, enables one to see why the different conceptions of responsibility distinctive to each sometimes bring (especially parts of international) law and politics into irreconcilable conflict with morality and politics sometimes with law.

In this episode Dr Kathleen Birrell and Tim Lindgren were joined by Dr Daniel Matthews (University of Warwick) to discuss his new book Earthbound: The Aesthetics of Sovereignty . The conversation traversed the aesthetic force of sovereignty as a framing device of modern legal and political forms and the possibility of an alternative political aesthetics for the Anthropocene.

In this episode join James Parker, Jake Goldenfein, Fleur Johns, Andrea Leiter and Andre Dao in conversation on the questions of international law and technopolitics in the humanities.

Critique in the Tropics: The Crisis of Indian Legal Education and Scholarship, convened by Adil Hasan Khan. This panel featured contributions from academics trained in the law in India, and who are currently teaching at Indian universities, and reflected on the inheritances, futures and failures of a critical legal project for Indian legal education and scholarship. Featuring Dr. Anuj Bhuwania (Jindal Global Law School), Dr. Oishik Sircar (Jindal Global Law School), Dr. Debolina Dutta (Jindal Global Law School), and Professor Rukmini Sen (Dr B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi).

Join Hilary Charlesworth (MLS) in conversation with Roland Bleiker (Director of a cross disciplinary project on Visual Politics at UQ) to discuss the role of images and emotions in global politics, and in particular the politics and ethics of visualising humanitarian crises which is the subject of Professor Bleiker's new ARC Linkage project.

In this event, we talked about doing fieldwork, and were joined by special guests, Dr Debolina Dutta and Dr Amanda Gilbertson. The session was convened jointly with Dr Ben Golder and the UNSW Critique Network.

Join Johanna Commins, Ann Genovese for this conversation with Professor Margaret Thornton which reflects on the 2000 conference, Romancing the Tomes, which brought together feminist scholars working across law and the humanities under the auspices of the ANU Humanities Research Centre to address the fictions of law, the legal academy and judges through the lens of popular culture.

The Amsterdam Center for International Law and IILAH present Unpacking Transitional Justice: International Law, Memory, and Power, convened by Dr Eliana Cusato (ACIL) and Valeria Vázquez Guevara (MLS). The aim of the Series is to bring together scholars from around the world employing interdisciplinary and critical approaches to the study of transitional justice and international law, broadly understood. This episode is the final seminar of a four-part series on Unpacking Transitional Justice. Our speakers include Associate Professor Oishik Sircar (Jindal), Associate Professor Sara Kendall (Kent) and Christopher Gevers (University of KwaZulu-Natal). Join us as we discuss 'Dealing with...the past? Reconciliation, reparations, and beyond'.

The Amsterdam Center for International Law and IILAH present Unpacking Transitional Justice: International Law, Memory, and Power, convened by Dr Eliana Cusato (ACIL) and Valeria Vázquez Guevara (MLS). The aim of the Series is to bring together scholars from around the world employing interdisciplinary and critical approaches to the study of transitional justice and international law, broadly understood. This episode is the third seminar of a four-part series on Unpacking Transitional Justice. Our speakers include Associate Professor Christine Schwöbel-Patel (Warwick) and Dr Hannah Franzki (Bremen). This episode discusses 'Justice: The political economy of international law'. Dr Christine Schwöbel-Patel is an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick School of Law. Her research spans areas of international law, global constitutionalism, governance, and critical pedagogy. Dr Hannah Franzki is a Research Fellow in the Transnational Force of Law Project since 2015. Her research interests include legal theory and philosophy, international political economy with a particular focus on transnational investment law and international criminal law.

The Amsterdam Center for International Law and IILAH present Unpacking Transitional Justice: International Law, Memory, and Power, convened by Dr Eliana Cusato (ACIL) and Valeria Vázquez Guevara (MLS). The aim of the Series is to bring together scholars from around the world employing interdisciplinary and critical approaches to the study of transitional justice and international law, broadly understood. This episode is the second seminar of a four-part series on Unpacking Transitional Justice. Our speakers include Professor Lucas Lixinski (UNSW) and Dr Maria Elander (La Trobe). This seminar focuses on how transitional justice institutions and international law shape post-conflict societies by giving meaning, or organising in particular ways the meanings, to culture, cultural heritage, victimhood and victims, broadly speaking. Lucas Lixinski is a Professor at the Faculty of Law and Justice at UNSW Sydney. He researches and teaches across a range of fields in international law, primarily international cultural heritage law and international human rights law. Maria Elander is a senior lecturer at La Trobe Law School. Her research is primarily in the broader field of international criminal justice, and engages with theories in cultural and feminist legal studies.

The Amsterdam Center for International Law and IILAH present Unpacking Transitional Justice: International Law, Memory, and Power, convened by Dr Eliana Cusato (ACIL) and Valeria Vázquez Guevara (MLS). The aim of the Series is to bring together scholars from around the world employing interdisciplinary and critical approaches to the study of transitional justice and international law, broadly understood. For the first seminar of the series, our convenors, Valeria Vazquez Guevara and Dr Eliana Cusato, provide a series introduction with a discussion on the role of international in truth commissions and post-conflict state-building, in the aftermath of the 1980s-1990s civil wars of El Salvador (1980-1992), Liberia (1989-1996) and Sierra Leone (1991-2002). Professor Sundhya Pahuja provides the series opening. A selection of the presentation slides displayed at the seminar are available for context here: https://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/powerpoint_doc/0004/3644140/UTJ-seminar-one-slides.pptx Valeria Vazquez Guevara is a doctoral candidate at the Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. Dr Eliana Cusato is Marie Skłodowska Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Amsterdam Center for International Law, University of Amsterdam.

This instalment of the IILAH/Critique Network Skills Circle featured Stewart Motha (Birkbeck, University of London) on his experience at running a podcast. Stewart’s research is on sovereignty, violence, human and post-human archives. He has recently published articles on international law and the humanities, and on the autonomy and heteronomy of law. His current major project explores the multiple forms and sources of legal norms (heteronomy) as a counter-narrative to liberal positivist accounts of the autonomy of law. This includes challenging the opposition between life/non-life.

This instalment of the IILAH/CN Skills Circle features Illan Wall (University of Warwick) who discusses his experience with academic Blogging. Illan works on questions of protest, public order and critical legal theory. He has published on critical legal theory, affective dynamics of policing, theories of constituent power, the Arab Spring, protest and transitional justice in Colombia, theories of human rights and revolt, and new Andean constitutional apparatuses.

Across the world today, more than one billion people live in substandard housing and informal settlements. Every year, several million people lose their homes as a consequence of development projects, conflicts, natural disasters or the climate crisis. Many of them are subjected to forced evictions. To understand and address these issues, in 2000, the United Nations (UN) Commission on Human Rights established the role of Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing In this Interview, Professor Sundhya Pahuja (University of Melbourne) and Dr Luis Eslava (Kent Law School) talk with Professor Balakrishnan Rajagopal (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) on his recent appointment to that role. Topics they cover include, what is the role of Special Rapporteur, and how are its functions carried out? What is understood to be a ‘right to housing’, and what are the main challenges that communities face in accessing such rights? This interview addresses these questions and explores the various challenges and approaches to international law and development over the last 20 years. Balakrishnan Rajagopal (USA) is Professor of Law and Development at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A lawyer by training, he is an expert on many areas of human rights, including economic, social and cultural rights, the UN system, and the human rights challenges posed by development activities. He has conducted over 20 years of research on social movements and human rights advocacy around the world focusing in particular, on land and property rights, evictions and displacement. A more extensive profile of Balakrishnan is available on the United Nations website.

Join Dr. Ntina Tzouvala (ANU) and Danish Sheikh (MLS) in conversation with Dr. Rahul Rao (SOAS), the author of 'Out of Time: The Queer Politics of Postcoloniality'. In this book, Rahul explores the encounters and entanglements across geopolitical divides that produce and contest contemporary queerphobias. Intervening in a queer theoretical literature on temporality, the book argues that time and space matter differently in the queer politics of postcolonial countries. By employing an intersectional analysis and drawing on a range of sources, Rahul offers an original interpretation of why queerness mutates to become a metonym for categories such as nationality, religiosity, race, class, and caste. Rahul Rao is Senior Lecturer in Politics at SOAS University of London and a member of the Radical Philosophy collective; Ntina Tzouvala is a Senior Lecturer at the ANU College of Law; Danish Sheikh is a PhD Candidate at Melbourne Law School and a Member of IILAH.

For the second instalment of the Skills Circle, Ben Golder (UNSW Law School) and Sundhya Pahuja (Melbourne Law School) joined Tom Randall (Cambridge University Press) and Cait Storr (University of Technology Sydney) to continue the discussion on the preparation and execution of writing a successful book proposal. As per part one, this session featured short presentations from our guests followed by a Q&A session. This recording is part two of a two-part series that was recorded in August 2020. Cait Storr is Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Law Faculty at University of Technology Sydney. Her research addresses the relationship between property, territory and jurisdiction in international law, with a particular focus on decolonial struggles for legal control over natural resources. She has published on the history of international administration, the concept of territory in international law, Australian imperialism in the Pacific, decolonisation, and international environmental law. Tom Randall is the Commissioning Editor on the Academic law list for Cambridge University Press. Tom’s primary areas of interest are public international law and related subjects, European law, human rights law, and jurisprudence.

In this recording, Dr Ben Golder (UNSW Law School) and Professor Sundhya Pahuja (Melbourne Law School) joined Michelle Lipinski (Senior Editor, University of California Press) to discuss the ins and outs of writing a book proposal, particularly based on a successful PhD thesis. This recording featured a short presentation from Michelle followed by a Q&A session. This recording is part one of a two-part series that was recorded in August 2020. Michelle Lipinski is Senior Acquisitions Editor for economics and technology studies at the University of California Press. Previously, Michelle was an editor at Stanford University Press, where she acquired trade and academic titles for their anthropology and law and society lists. Before Stanford, Michelle started her career in publishing at Oxford University Press in New York.

The modern study – and practice – of security has been largely concerned with the protection, preservation and sustaining of the material, the tangible and the visible. For many people around the world, however, feelings of security also derive from understandings of an individual or community’s relationships with invisible and spiritual forces. Religious devotion and divine protection represent a central plank of security for many, just as fears of divine retribution, demonic possession or witchcraft feature as a central dimension of insecurity for many others. This remains, however, a conceptual and empirical blindspot in much of Critical Security Studies. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken in north-western Uganda, this study reflects critically on the provenance and implications of this central oversight and argues for an expanded scholarly and practitioner understanding of what “counts” as (in)security – one which better captures how the phenomenon is experienced. In doing so, the article emphasizes the global character of spiritual (in)security and the challenges such an understanding of (in)security poses to longstanding scholarly and practitioner associations of (in)security with state authority. Jonathan Fisher is Reader in African Politics in, and Director of, the International Development Department of the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on the intersections between conflict, (in)security and authoritarianism in Africa, and he has a particular interest in Eastern Africa.

Terms such as “fake news” and “alternative facts” have become common vocabulary in the so-called post-truth era. But there is a sense in which these are just contemporary iterations of a familiar phenomenon: propaganda. Propaganda is not merely concerned with sending messages – its aim is to construct reality as such. How is propaganda employed today in alt-right regimes, the ongoing War on Terror and corporate climate crimes? How do art and culture visualize and stage new realities in the making? And what alternative practices of emancipatory propaganda emerge from popular mass movements and stateless insurgencies? In this introduction to his book Propaganda Art in the 21st Century(MIT Press: 2019), artist Jonas Staal elaborates on what he describes as today’s arena of the propaganda(art)struggle. Jonas Staal is a visual artist whose work deals with the relation between art, propaganda, and democracy. His projects have been exhibited widely at venues such as the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, as well as the 7th Berlin Biennial (2012), the 31st São Paulo Biennale (2014), The Oslo Architecture Triennale (2016) and the Warsaw Biennale (2019). Recent publications and catalogs include Nosso Lar, Brasília (Jap Sam Books, 2014), Stateless Democracy (with co-editors Dilar Dirik and Renée In der Maur, BAK, 2015), Steve Bannon: A Propaganda Retrospective (Het Nieuwe Instituut, 2018) and Propaganda Art in the 21st Century (MIT Press, 2019). Staal completed his PhD research on propaganda art at the PhD Arts program of Leiden University, The Netherlands.