Global Legal Studies - University of Birmingham

This theme encompasses work on the development, impact, movement, and deployment of law and other norms across national and transnational legal spaces.

It includes, but is not limited to:

Public and private international law;
public and private comparative law;
global governance and development, including critical approaches.

Our researchers have submitted and influenced amici curiae and third party interventions to courts around the world; worked with civil society partners and campaigners to challenge inequalities and injustices and provided guidance and critique of regulations, policies, and frameworks of national, supranational and global institutions.

Our research has been published in journals such as European Journal of International Law, Human Rights Quarterly, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, and Social Legal Studies.

We write frequently for The Conversation, the Oxford Human Rights Hub and provide expert comment on current affairs.

Staff researching in this theme

Shaimaa Abdelkarim’s research addresses questions on coloniality, human rights and resistance.
Georgia Antonopoulou is interested in private international law and commercial dispute resolution.
Kate Bedford's research focuses on law and development, and gender and political economy. She also researches gambling law and regulation.
Emily Carroll's research is to do with law and property; she is interested in exploring how land interacts with a wide spectrum of private and public law principles, including land law, equity, company and insolvency law, and planning law and policy.
Aleksandra Cavoski is a Professor of Law whose research interests are in the field of environmental law and EU law, including the intersection of law and other disciplines, in particular politics, science, public policy and language.
Rachel Charman - Chinese; Language and Law; Equivalence in translation; effect of English judgments on Chinese judicial reform; course design including SQE.
Fiona de Londras' work concerns the role and function of rights in contentious policy fields, inquiring into how (if at all) rights shape the making of law and policy in complex contexts of, for example, counter-terrorism, reproductive rights, and the implementation of international legal standards.
Damian Gonzalez-Salzberg's research focuses on human rights, international law, research methods, and gender, sexuality and law.
Natasha Gooden's research addresses public international law and advancements in technology, with a focus on cyber operations, conflict and human rights.
Alan Greene's research focuses on emergency powers, human rights, counter-terrorism, and constituent power.
Rosie Harding uses empirical and conceptual socio-legal methods to investigate the place of law in everyday life, with a focus on social justice, family law and disability law.
Jason Haynes' research critiques the power asymmetries inherent in select areas of international law and their implications of these asymmetries for vulnerable communities, and explores the emancipatory potential of law and policy to challenge these asymmetries.
Atina Krajewska is a health lawyer specialising in global health law and sexual and reproductive justice, developing the sociology of health law.
Natasa Mavronicola's research examines various dimensions of human rights law and practice, including the nature and scope of absolute rights, the (non-paradigmatic) interpretation of key human rights such as the right to life and the right not to be tortured or ill-treated, and the relationship between human rights and state penality.
Karen McAuliffe's research focuses on the field of law and language, and she has particular interests in multilingual law production and the relationship between law, language and translation in multilingual legal orders. She is also interested in the legal recognition of sign languages and Deaf legal theory.
Kieren McGuffin's research focuses on domestic and international asylum law and policy.
Lydia Morgan's research focuses on conceptual analysis and critiques of secrecy, transparency, accountability, national security and counter-terrorism.
Walters Nsoh's research focuses primarily on the intersection of property (land) law and environmental law as it relates to the governance and sustainable management of natural resources/ecosystem goods and services.
Chukwuma Okoli's research is focused on commercial conflict of laws and private international law, with an emphasis on global comparative perspectives.
Rehana Parveen is interested in English Family Law, Islamic Family Law, Muslim women, religious tribunals, decolonising the law and decolonising the curriculum.
Rishika Sahgal's research focuses on the place of the people in constitutional interpretation; economic and social rights; demolition of homes, displacement of people and their resistance; from Global South and anticolonial perspectives.
Mohammad Shahabuddin researches in international law and human rights with special focus on history and theory, postcolonial statehood, minority rights, and the right to self-determination.
Silvana Tapia Tapia develops an anticolonial feminist critique of penal systems and international human rights, foregrounding the practices of anti-carceral social movements.
Chris Thornhill is an interdisciplinary researcher with research interests in the sociology of law, comparative constitutional law and legal theory.
Felix E Torres' research focuses on economic and social rights and reparations in post-conflict societies, including transitional justice.
Ben Warwick's research explores how economic factors and crises affect human rights (and especially socio-economic rights).
Xinyue Xue's research focuses on legal instruments and policies that support small businesses, particularly in government procurement.

AHRC project "Building Reproductive Justice with Indigenous Women in North-East Brazil"
SLSA funded project 'Between the Law and the Market: Foreign Judges in the Dubai International Financial Centre Courts'
Legal Recognition of Sign Languages Project; EUCLCORP; Law and Language at the European Court of Justice
'The Environment...' - PrecisionTox and PARC projects
Constitutional Environmental Duties of Individuals: Past, Present and Future
My current 'Co-Producing Accessible Legal Information' could be included on legal education and the profession or Equality Gender and Feminist Legal Studies, or Care, Health and Human Flourishing, as it sits across all of them.
I’m a co-convener of the Feminist TWAIL network and which can go under the equality, gender, FLS theme.
Toward a non-penal human rights framework to counteract violence against women (Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship project)