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Call for Participation: Borders, Racisms and Harms: A Symposium @ Birkbeck (2–3 May 2018)

The current socio-political context is characterised by Brexit and Europe’s shoring up of borders in response to irregular migration via the Mediterranean, hyper-criminalisation of migrants, growth of corporate involvement in the management of migration, travel bans, rise of right-wing populism, racisms and xenophobic sentiments across much of the West, and rapid erosion of rights. At the same time, there are constantly new modes of solidarity and resistance emerging, which are also subject to state responses and controls.

This event aims to bring together scholars at various stages of their careers, third sector workers, and people with direct experience of immigration controls and borders to examine the theme of border harms from different substantive angles and theoretical perspectives. The idea of border harms encompasses the variety of ways that bordering practices produce harm and are interconnected with race and racisms. The symposium organisers therefore invite proposals on any of the following broad areas:

  • The policing of migration
  • Refugees and asylum seekers
  • Border deaths
  • Migration and state violence
  • Resistance, solidarity, protest, and advocacy
  • Immigration detention
  • Deportation
  • Foreign national prisoners
  • The criminalisation of solidarity
  • The politics of reform and advocacy
  • Everyday borders and bordering practices
  • Racialisation, securitisation, criminalisation, and surveillance
  • Brexit and the ‘hostile environment’
  • Populism, nationalism, and citizenship practices
  • Empire, colonialism, and state racisms

In addition to academic papers, proposals are welcome for other types of participation, including workshops, performances, and art. Participants are strongly encouraged to consider issues of race, gender, and other social factors in their contributions.

This event is interdisciplinary and will be of interest to scholars from criminology, sociology, social policy, law, human geography, anthropology, and psychology, as well as people with lived experience of border harms and NGO workers involved in practice, advocacy, policy, and research. Attendance will be free.

Confirmed keynote speakers are Professor Shahram Khosravi (Stockholm University), author of ‘Illegal’ Traveller: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders (Palgrave, 2010) and editor of After Deportation: Ethnographic Perspectives (Palgrave, 2018), and Dr Alpa Parmar (University of Oxford), Associate Director of Border Criminologies and co-editor of Race, Criminal Justice, and Migration Control: Enforcing the Boundaries of Belonging (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Please email your proposal (250 words maximum) to the symposium organisers, Monish Bhatia, Gemma Lousley, and Sarah Turnbull (Birkbeck, University of London), by 5:00pm on Friday, 6 April 2018 at BorderHarms@gmail.com. A publication is being planned based on a selection of work presented at the symposium. If you are interested in putting your work forward for consideration in this publication, please so indicate in your proposal. Thank you!

Sun 04 Feb 2018, 21:00 | Tags: Conference, border, call for papers, harm, racism

Call for Papers: 10th Conference on the Future of Adversarial and Inquisitorial Systems

The Early Career Scholars’ Day 2018 and the 10th Conference on the Future of Adversarial and Inquisitorial Systems will be taking place on 25 April 2018 at the Faculty of Law, University of Basel. The theme of the conference is "Accountability of Criminal Justice Systems: Formation, Application and Enforcement of Law in Changing Circumstances".

Accountability in criminal justice has many dimensions: We expect accurate outcomes, procedural fairness, protections of civil liberties, and respectful treatment of all participants in the criminal justice system to the extent possible. Traditionally, we have accorded great power and influence to expert practitioners in the system − be they police, judges, prosecutors, or defense counsel. As victims, defendants and ordinary citizens increase their ability to tell their stories in new ways, their concerns have changed the way that scholars and politicians think about what it means to be accountable. Whether we start with an inquisitorial or adversarial model, increased transparency in the digital age has led to a corresponding increase in pressure on all of the participants in the system. Competing priorities inevitably lead to tradeoffs between incommensurable interests. Maintaining a legitimate system requires thoughtful engagement to manage potential conflicts, and to rebalance the approaches the participants adopt in light of new information.

In this session, we will hear presentations from early-career scholars writing about accountability in criminal justice from comparative and national law perspectives. We welcome authors interested in critiquing the system from a descriptive or normative perspective, or in proposing new methods, approaches or perspectives that will further the conversation on defining and achieving accountability in criminal justice.

The application should encompass:

− maximum 5 pages of the research subject you would like to present

− CV with full contact details

Application deadline: 15 February 2018

Applications should be sent to the conference coordinator, Professor Sabine Gless, to the following address: sabine.gless@unibas.ch. The selected students will give a presentation of their work in front of their peers. Then, discussants will include the members of the 10th Conference on the Future of the Adversarial and Inquisitorial Systems, among them Prof Jackie Hodgson (University of Warwick), Prof Richard Myers (University of North-Carolina at Chapel Hill), Prof Michele Caianiello (University of Bologna), Prof Sabine Gless (University of Basel). The floor will be open to debates. Travel expenses linked to the participation at the Ph.D. seminar, unfortunately, cannot be covered.

Wed 24 Jan 2018, 22:34 | Tags: Conference, Criminal Justice, Jackie Hodgson

Laurène Soubise presents paper at the Fordham Law School

On 8 and 9 December, Laurene Soubise attended an international legal ethics conference that brought more than 50 law scholars and lawyers to Fordham Law School (in New York) from around the world. The theme of the conference was “Regulation of Legal and Judicial Services: Comparative and International Perspectives” and it was hosted by the Stein Center for Law and Ethics. Laurene presented a paper with Prof Alice Woolley from Calgary University (Canada) entitled 'Prosecutors in Pursuit of the Public Interest: Challenges Across Jurisdictions'. The paper will be published next year in the Fordham International Law Journal.
Wed 27 Dec 2017, 00:39 | Tags: Conference, Laurène Soubise

Conference Call - ‘Punishment: Negotiating Society’ at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

The International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS-REMEP) has issued a call for papers for its upcoming conference titled ‘Punishment: Negotiating Society’. The conference shall be held at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale), Germany on 14 – 16 February 2018. Professor John Pratt as the keynote speaker of the conference shall be speaking on “The end of penal populism; the rise of political populism?”

The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 31 December 2017. Further details can be accessed here.

Wed 06 Dec 2017, 21:43 | Tags: Conference, Criminal Justice, Criminology, Penal Populism, Punishment

Jackie Hodgson chairs JUSTICE conference panel

Prof Jackie Hodgson chaired the criminal justice panel on 13 October 2017. The session included presentations on trafficking, legal privilege, and extradition post Brexit. Jackie is an elected member of the JUSTICE council.

Professor Jackie Hodgson at the JUSTICE Annual Human Rights Conference 2017

Wed 18 Oct 2017, 10:06 | Tags: Conference, Human Rights

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