Serena Natile

Associate Professor

PhD Students Mentor

Gender & Law, Feminisms; Social Reproduction Theory; Feminist Political Economy; Law & Development; Transnational Social Security/Labour Law; Financial Inclusion, FinTech and Digital Platforms

School of Law
S1.20, Social Sciences Building
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
United Kingdom

024 765 73442

Scholarship

Serena’s research interests lie in the areas of gender studies, law & development, global political economy, finance and digital technologies. In her research, Serena brings together socio-legal enquiry, critical political economy analysis and feminist and decolonial methods to examine issues relating to coloniality, social reproduction and (mal)distribution and, more generally, the relationship between law and social (in)justice. Serena has published on gender equality in international law, law and development, feminist political economy and social reproduction theory, financial inclusion and the governance of digital technologies. Her recent book The Exclusionary Politics of Digital Financial Inclusion: Mobile Money, Gendered Wall (RIPE Series in Global Political Economy, Routledge 2020) provides a socio-legal critique of the narratives, institutions and governance of digital financial inclusion as a development strategy for gender equality, arguing for a decolonial politics of redistribution to guide future digital financial projects.

Serena's new project, and related monograph, 'Transnational Social Security Law in the Digital Age: Towards a Grassroots Politics of RedistributionLink opens in a new window' asks whether a grassroots-inspired framework for transnational social security law can disrupt the global maldistribution of wealth and power enabled by the international legal order. The project considers this question by looking at the recent digitalisation of social security programmes in Brazil, South Africa, Kenya and India, and draws on socio-legal and feminist political economy analysis as well as prefigurative law-making methodology to show the different distributive impact that these programmes could have if a transnational framework for social security was in place. The prefigurative element of the framework draws on Serena's project 'A Feminist Recovery Plan for Covid-19 and Beyond: Learning from Grassroots Activism' and the global political economy analysis draws on the project co-led with Christine Schwobel-Patel 'Rosa Luxemburg & International Law'. Serena has been awarded the ISRF Early Career Fellowship (2024-2025) Link opens in a new windowfor this project.

At Warwick Serena is on the steering committee of GLOBE and the IEL Collective. She is also a member of the collective steering group of CSWG and part of WICID.

Serena is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Law in ContextLink opens in a new window, CUP.

Bio

Serena holds a Laurea/LLB from the University of Siena, Italy (with an academic year spent as an Erasmus visiting student at the University of Bristol, School of Law), a MA (taught + research) in Law and International Relations from the University of Trento, School of International Studies, Italy and a PhD in Socio-Legal Studies from Kent Law School, University of Kent, UK. Serena also holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy since 2019.

Serena joined Warwick Law School in October 2020. Previously, she was a Lecturer in Socio-Legal Studies at Brunel Law School (2018-2020), a Postdoctoral Researcher at King’s College London (2017-2018) and an Associate Lecturer and Researcher at Kent Law School (2011-2018), where she completed her PhD in 2016. At Kent Serena held a Postgraduate Research Scholarship and served for three years on the steering committee of the Centre for Sexuality, Race and Gender Justice (2011-2014). During her postdoc at King’s College London, Serena worked with Prof David Nelken on a project on Digital Humanitarianism aimed at mapping how digital technologies are changing the governance of humanitarian assistance and analysing the law and policy dilemmas resulting from these changes.

Besides academia, Serena worked for the Migration and Asylum Unit of the Permanent Representation of Italy to the EU (2010) and for the UNDP in Brussels (2011) and collaborated with gender rights organisations and activists in Italy, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and Brazil.

Publications

'Beaumier, Guillaume, 'Kalomeni, Kevin, 'Campbell?Verduyn, Malcolm, 'Lenglet, Marc, 'Natile, Serena, 'Papin, Marielle, 'Rodima?Taylor, Daivi, 'Silve, Arthur, 'Zhang, Falin, 2020. 'Global regulations for a digital economy : between new and old challenges. Global Policy, 11 (4), pp. 515-522
Natile, Serena, 2020. Regulating exclusions? Gender, development, and the limits of inclusionary financial platforms. International Journal of Law in Context, 15 (4), pp. 461-478
Natile, Serena, 2020. Digital finance and the mobile money ?social? enterprise : a socio-legal critique of M-Pesa in Kenya. Historical Social Research, 45 (3), pp. 74-94

Natile, Serena, 2023. New technologies of international law and development. In Buchanan, Ruth; Eslava, Luis; Pahuja, Sundhya (eds.), Oxford Handbook of International Law and Development, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 731-752
Natile, Serena, 2022. Gender justice in social science. Kitchener, M. (ed.), Handbook for Creating a Gender-Sensitive Curriculum: Teaching and Learning Strategies, Gender Equality Actions in Research Institutions to traNsform Gender ROLES (GEARING-Roles)
Natile, Serena, 2021. Concept : social reproduction. Wall, Illan Rua; Middleton, Freya; Shah, Sahar; CLAW, (eds.), The Critical Legal Pocketbook, Oxford: Counterpress, Counterpress
Natile, Serena, 2020. The exclusionary politics of digital financial inclusion : mobile money, gendered walls. London, Routledge
Natile, Serena, 2016. Uguaglianza di genere: L'incidenza del diritto internazionale sull'attuale quadro normativo. In Urso , Elena (ed.), Uguaglianza, Lavoro, Diritti: dalle misure di tutela alle pari opportunità, Libellula Edizioni, pp. 153-192

Natile, Serena, Tapia Tapia, Silvana, 2018. Review of Governance feminism : an introduction by Halley, J. Prabha Kotiswaran, P., Rebouché, R. and Shamir H.. Law & Society Review, Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 1106-1111

Teaching Projects

Funded

Title	Funder	Award start	Award end
Transnational social security law in the digital age: towards a grassroots politics of redistribution	Independent Social Research Foundation	01 Sep 2024	31 Aug 2025

Highlighted

Transnational Social Security Law in the Digital Age: towards a grassroots politics of redistribution

This project draws on socio-legal and critical political economy analysis, collaborative policy design, and prefigurative law-making methodology to conceptualise a grassroots-inspired framework for transnational social security law that considers the risks and potential of digital technologies in implementing social protection schemes globally. The project is motivated by the urgency to address the growing global inequality and maldistribution of power and wealth enabled by the current international legal order. It aims to explore the reparative and revolutionary potential of transnational social security law to contribute to a global politics of redistribution that critically engages with the changes brought by digitalisation. This research will bring together community and activist groups, researchers, international organisations and other relevant stakeholders to establish the field of transnational social security law while reimagining a radically redistributive role for digital technology.

Check out the project website.

Rosa Luxemburg & International Law

2021 marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Rosa Luxemburg: a revolutionary theorist and political activist, whose work has provided important political economy critiques of imperialism, capitalism, nationalism and advocated for the collective commitment to social justice. While recent books have celebrated her life and intellectual and political legacy, engagement with her work in international law, although with some notable exceptions, has been largely marginal. Despite her sharp and insightful analysis of the nexus between colonialism and capitalist accumulation and her commitment to anti-militarism and internationalism, Luxemburg’s work remains less visible and prominent than male social thinkers and political economists. This project brings together researchers from different parts of the world to collectively explore what an engagement with Rosa Luxemburg’s work may offer at this juncture of neoliberal capitalism, climate disaster, and pandemic.

Co-organised with Christine Schwöbel-Patel.

Check out the project website.

A Feminist Recovery Plan for Covid-19 and Beyond: Learning from Grassroots Activism

The Covid-19 crisis has exposed deep inequalities embedded in national and international socio-economic systems and legal frameworks. Over-stretched social services and an over-reliance on unpaid and precarious labour compensate for the inadequacies of social infrastructure, economic policies and labour regulation, instead of inspiring more social justice-driven approaches. The crisis can provide an opportunity to identify the limits of such systems and reimagine the policies that shape them. This project aims to bring together activists, academics and policy-makers to collectively reimagine a feminist recovery plan for Covid-19 and beyond by placing grassroots feminisms at the centre of policy-making, learning from the past and looking at the future.

Check out the project website.

The Exclusionary Politics of Digital Financial Inclusion

For the last ten years Serena has been working on feminist critiques of financial inclusion. Her recent monograph The Exclusionary Politics of Digital Financial Inclusion: Mobile Money, Gendered Walls (Routledge 2020) examines the narratives and institutions of digital financial inclusion as a development strategy for gender equality, arguing for a decolonial politics of redistribution to guide digital financial inclusion projects. This book is based on her PhD thesis completed at Kent Law School 'Mobile Money and the Limits of Financial Inclusion: A Gender Analysis of M-Pesa in Kenya'. In collaboration with scholars and practitioners, Serena is now investigating the redistributive dynamics of digital financial platforms in Brazil, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Pakistan and India and theorising the possibility to realise a New Digital Economic Order that reconciles the anti-colonial politics of NIEO with grassroots activism.

Inclusionary Practices Project

Serena is part of the British Academy-funded Inclusionary Practices Project led by Prof Toni Williams from Kent Law School and Prof Fabricio Polido from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). This project examines multiple ways in which legal and regulatory techniques are used to implement social and economic inclusion policies in Europe, Latin America and in the digital domain. The research team is currently working on an edited collection for the Elgar series in Law, Development and Global Justice. Beyond its contribution to scholarship and policy debates, the project has created new research and teaching collaborations with scholars from Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador. Particularly relevant is Serena’s collaboration with Professors Pedro Gravata Nicoli and Marcelo Macier Ramos, founders of the DIVERSO project (Núcleo Jurídico de Diversidade Sexual e de Gênero) at UFMG.

The IEL Collective

This collaborative project aims to provide a space for critical reflection on the knowledge, institutions and logics that govern the global economy, and stimulate conversations about plurality and representation in researching, teaching and practising international economic law (IEL).

More details available at https://go.warwick.ac.uk/ielcollective/.

Impact Research Supervision

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD supervisees. However, please ensure that you have a research proposal which corresponds with the University of Warwick School of Law requirements.

I'm interested in supervising research projects in the areas of gender, international law and development, feminist political economy and IEL, labour law, and socio-legal studies of finance and digital technologies.

Current PhD students:

Priscilla Vitoh - (supervised with Prof Ann Stewart): ‘The Interlinkage Between Landed Property Rights and Access to Bank Financing for Urban Women-Owned Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in Ghana’ (started in October 2020 and submitted in August 2023).
Farzan Dar - (supervised with Prof Solange Mouthaan): ‘Women at the Grassroots - Studying Constitutional Empowerment and Disempowerment in Kashmir’ (started in October 2021 – ongoing).
Hadijah Namyalo Ganafa - (supervised with Prof Sharifah Sekalala): ‘The Identification Gap: Exploring the Gaps and Intersectional Disconnections in Digital Identification for Health in Uganda’ (started in October 2022 – ongoing).
Jennifer Wright - (supervised with Prof Vanessa Munro): ‘The ‘Justice Needs’ of Claimants and the Role of the Employment Tribunal in Sex Discrimination and Harassment Claims’ (started in October 2023 – ongoing).

Social Media