A substantial grant has been awarded by the Scottish Government to fund ground-breaking research into the operation of the jury within the Scottish Criminal Justice System.

The team; which will include our own Vanessa Munro, Professor of Law at the University of Warwick and Professors James Chalmers and Fiona Leverick from the University of Glasgow, will work alongside the independent research organisation Ipsos Mori, to explore three distinctive features of the unique Scottish Law System.

This study will provide vital insights into the operation of distinctive aspects of the Scottish Jury. It will involve several hundred members of the public observing trial reconstructions and participating as ‘mock jurors.'

Newly published in 2017, Associate Professor Dallal Stevens’ co-edited book ‘States, the Law and Access to Refugee Protection’, with Maria O'Sullivan (Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, Monash University), investigates two current, critical challenges for asylum seekers hoping to find refuge within international systems of protection: first, the initial obstacles encountered by refugees in gaining entry to foreign territories; and second, the barriers to accessing quality asylum.

Dr Alison Struthers' article 'The Underdeveloped Transformative Potential of Human Rights Education: English primary education as a case study' has been published by the Journal of Human Rights Practice (DOI:10.1093/jhuman/huw023).

The article argues that in order for learners to become empowered human rights activitists, they must be equipped with relevant knowledge, skills and attitudes. It draws upon empirical research conducted with teachers from primary schools across England to argue that whilst empowerment-related concepts may be encouraged to a certain extent, learners are unlikely to be emerging from formal schooling with the means to contribute significantly to transformation of the broader human rights culture.

Ali Struthers organised a successful event on campus on the 11th of November with primary and secondary school pupils as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science. The event saw 60 primary pupils from Widening Participation schools attend campus in the morning and 60 secondary pupils from WP schools in the afternoon. The pupils took part in workshops that addressed challenging issues in the social sciences through literature appropriate to young people. The workshops were run by Ali (human rights), Phil Gaydon (war), James Harrison (labour rights) and Lucy Hatton (immigration), and the event was well-received by all who took part.

Read about James' experience of his morning workshop here.

Alice has been awarded £10,900 for the project "Al-Khan-al-Ahmar. Saving a Bedouin School in the West Bank through International Law" through the ESRC Global Challenges Research Fund: Impact Acceleration Account additional funding. This project seeks to bring some of the findings of an article in Social & Legal Studies to a wider non-academic audience in the UK. An event is provisionally scheduled for the second half of November, which will involve participants from the field as well as academics.

Sharifah has published an online article titled 'Yes, the fight for anti-HIV drugs is a fight against discrimination', to read the article please click here. 

Alison Struthers has been awarded £9,217.76 by Warwick ESRC IAA to aid her in developing educational resources that will show how the requirement to teach fundamental British values in primary schools can be linked to broader human rights frameworks. Well done Alison.

For more information about Warwick ESRC IAA funding please click here.

Alison Struthers has secured £500 from the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2016 to hold a event
 
'Addressing challenging social science issues with young people'

Monday, 20 June 2016, Dr Ania Zbyszewska was featured as a speaker at the Gender Rules! Research Methods in Law seminar at the Cardiff Law School. Dr Zbyszewska spoke about discourse analysis and regulatory design, drawing on her forthcoming book Gendering European Working Time Regimes (CUP, 2016). The seminar is sponsored by the Cardiff Centre of Law and Society and Cardiff Law School's Law and Gender research group. For more information, click here.

CHRP fellow Alison Struthers is travelling to Canada to attend and present at the Canada International Conference on Education, being held at the University of Toronto Mississauga between the 27^th and 30^th of June 2016.

She is co-presenting a paper with Chrystal Lynch of the University of Manitoba entitled ‘A Comparative Exploration of Human Rights Education in Primary Schools and Higher Education Institutes’. This comparative paper draws upon the authors’ respective research fields in England and Canada and they plan to write a journal article together following the conference.

Alison is also chairing a panel on ‘Global Issues in Education and Research’.

For more information, please go to http://www.ciceducation.org

Professor Shaheen Ali gave a lecture entitled Women's Rights and Plural Legalities as part of the 2016 Contextual Lecture Series: Taking Liberties.

In this talk Shaheen Sardar Ali contextualises the rights and place of British Muslim women negotiating their multiple identities. Some of the questions and issues addressed included the following: Is there an hierarchy of rights and legal norms that inform how British Muslim women order their lives and dealings with the plural legalities affecting their lives? To what extent do these plural legal systems contradict or reinforce each other and how does this interplay impact on the lives of British Muslim women?

The lecture was chaired by Dr Kenneth Wolfe, Convenor of the lecture series at Dulwich College, London.