Today is International Women's DayLink opens in a new window<Link opens in a new window (IWD), a global event held each year to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Significant activity is witnessed worldwide as groups come together to celebrate women's achievements, raise awareness against bias, and take action for equality.

Professor Christian Twigg-Flesner has recently been awarded a share of an AHRC grant of £35,000 for a project on Smart Technologies which will analyse how the legal issues created by the internet of things could be addressed in UK and German consumer law.

Warwick Law School’s Professor Jackie Hodgson and colleagues from the ‘Emerging from Lockdown’ research and creative team will be screening their new film at the Resonate Festival on Wednesday 16^th March at Holy Trinity Church in Coventry, exploring feelings of freedom and the policing of the pandemic.

More young men and women from rural areas of India could gain informed access to higher education and better life chances, tackling age-old obstacles of gender, caste and class, thanks to a project led by the University of Warwick — and a half-million-pound boost from the Fair Chance Foundation.

The European Law Institute (ELI) recently published its response to a European Commission consultation on reforms to the Product Liability Directive and liability for Artificial Intelligence systems. Professor Christian Twigg-Flesner contributed to ELI’s response, focusing in particular on the Product Liability Directive and building on the Guiding Principles he developed for ELI’s Innovation Paper on Guiding Principles for updating the Product Liability Directive for the Digital Age (2021).

This new podcast asks what access to Covid-19 vaccines shows us about global health inequalities, why the at-risk are being neglected and how young people are being affected. Dr Sharifah Sekalala and Belinda Rawson have compiled the series to explore the human rights issues that have evolved, and which have been exacerbated, during the pandemic.

Professor Linda Mulcahy from the University of Oxford's Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, interviews WLS Professor Alex Sharpe about her rich contribution to the field of socio-legal study over the last 25 years, in Frontiers' second Ask the Author post. Read the article.

"Clunky and challenging” – views on getting married in England and Wales outlined in new briefing.

The law on weddings in England and Wales has been too slow to respond to religious and cultural diversity and the increasing number of people who do not identify with any religion at all, finds a new study led by Warwick Law School researcher Dr Rajnaara Akhtar.

Dr Celine Tan of Warwick Law School comments: "The release of the fifth and final tranche of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT) will be a small but limited contribution to alleviating the debt crisis developing countries are facing in the wake of COVID-19.

A new podcast series commissioned by legal historian Dr Laura Lammasniemi and produced by Narrative Matters, explores the history of sexual consent and asks whether understanding that history can help tackle present-day problems in securing convictions for sexual offences.

The Age of Consent features thirteen expert voices, from academics to rape crisis workers and journalists, invited by Dr Lammasniemi to bring their own perspectives to the conversation.

Join Law School colleagues plus many more from Thursday 25 - Friday 26 November for an engaging series of talks about freedom. This festival of culture and ideas was organised as part of the Resonate Festival/Coventry UK City of Culture, 2021 in collaboration with Warwick Arts Centre. Over two days these talks and provocations will explore what freedom means to different people in different contexts. A number of our Law School colleagues will be presenting at the event. Sign up to join them. Tickets are free.

The House of Commons International Development Committee has published a new report, Global Britain in demand: UK climate action and international development around COP26. Dr Celine Tan, Reader in Warwick Law School comments on the climate finance aspects of this, and the UK COP26 Presidency's Climate Finance Delivery Plan, published yesterday.