POSTGRADUATE RESARCH MASTERCLASS

‘Asking Better Research Questions’

Professor Sundhya Pahuja

Room S2.09, Law School Building

1^st November 2022 2.30-5.30pm

We are pleased to announce that Professor Sundhya Pahuja will conduct a postgraduate research masterclass at Warwick Law School. Sundhya is the ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Professor of Law and the Director of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities at the University of Melbourne. She is one of the world’s leading scholars of the history and theory of international law. Sundhya is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, and in 2021 was awarded the Max Planck-Cambridge Prize for International Law. Her book, Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality (CUP, 2011) was awarded the American Society of International Law Certificate of Merit in 2012 and the Woodward Medal for Excellence in the Humanities and Social Sciences in 2014. In 2021, Sundhya was awarded an Australian Research Council Kathleen Fitzpatrick Fellowship for a five-year project on Global Corporations and International Law.

The masterclass will address issues which affect all legal research project, regardless of methodological or disciplinary orientation. The event is open to all PGR students, at any stage of their programme of study. The masterclass will give in-depth commentary on the framing of your on-going research projects and represents an excellent opportunity to get concrete advice on how to better craft your research form one of the world’s leading legal scholars.

In order to organise room bookings and catering, please register for the event by completing our event registration form.

In preparation for the masterclass, you will need to:

1. Send a 500 word summary of your thesis proposal/research project to Sundhya (sp2124@cam.ac.uk) and Daniel Matthews (Daniel.matthews@warwick.ac.uk) by 5.00pm Monday 17 October.

2. Read Sundhya’s chapter, ‘Practical Methodology: Writing About How We Do Research’ in Research Methods in International Law: A Handbook (Edward Elgar, 2021), pp. 60-77. A copy is attached to this email.

3. Before the meeting, have a go at re-writing your 500 word summary using the structure suggested in Sundhya’s chapter and bring your notes to our meeting. The suggested structure is:

a. Question

b. Object

c. Concrete methods

d. Theoretical orientation

e. Significance

During the masterclass Sundhya will endeavour to engage with as many of the thesis summaries as possible, but the practical workshopping of this work will be of use even if your proposal does not end up being discussed. If you would particularly like your proposal to be workshopped, let us know and we will try to prioritise it.