S.2.09, Warwick Law School, Social Sciences Building
About the Event:
The Law, Technology, and Development Learning Circle brings together staff and students across the University of Warwick who are interested in the regulatory, governance, human rights, and political economy challenges of technology in/and on society. The group is coordinated by the Centre for Law, Regulation and Governance of the Global Economy (GLOBE), Warwick Law School and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM) with the aim to create a space for sharing and discussing research and policy developments.
Through reading groups, events, and policy conversations the group aims to develop cross faculty collaborations that foreground Warwick’s law in context, and interdisciplinary research culture.
The discussion will be led by Professor Abdul Paliwala and will include a short presentation followed by reflections from participants. You are encouraged to read the book, or part of it, prior to the meeting.
We will discuss global and local aspects of AI Governance from the perspective of the Global South. We will be continuing from discussions in the previous two sessions. While the whole book provides a background on AI governance, four specific chapters are suggested as our focus for a critical exploration.
We will consider a number of questions:
1. What should be involved in AI regulation? (Chapter 13) (contrast with discussions in our previous two sessions)
2. What has been the role of EU AI regulation on global South regulation? (Chapter 13)
3. To what extent does the the global AI competition especially between the US and China affect global regulation? (Chapter 43)
4. Does this provide space for the South to develop their own strategies? (Chapter 48)
5. Is it possible for the South to decolonise its regulation strategies? (Chapter 48)
Postgraduate and research students are invited to attend a series of lectures by distinguished international scholars, legal practitioners, and industry professionals.
Drawing on our ESRC IAA project titled, 'Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Greylisting: Lessons from Nigeria’ and ongoing research, we discuss the politics of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) compliance. FATF, as a powerful standard setting body, exerts considerable transnational pressure on developing states through its greylisting mechanism shaping domestic legal and institutional priorities. Nigeria’s compliance is linked to its reputation management, access to global financial markets, foreign investments and development finance all which demand FATF compliance.
Our findings reveal that compliance with FATF standards is predominantly strategic, creative and often performative oriented towards signalling credibility rather than addressing entrenched governance challenges. This significantly generates enforcement challenges including fragmented inter-agency arrangements often characterised by low trust and uneven capacity, selective enforcement which often disproportionately targets informal and low-level actors whilst entrenching limited accountability for powerful interests leaving significant capacity deficits across compliance agencies. Exiting the greylist is therefore understood as symbolic, as it generates a legitimacy feedback loop that temporarily restores market confidence while maintaining structural weaknesses.
About the Spekers:
Dr Joy Malalais Assistant Professor at Warwick School, University of Warwick. Her research focuses on banking and financial regulation.
Dr Nkechikwu Azinge is an anti-laundering and counter-terrorist financing expert.
This is a Warwick Law School and GLOBE Centre joint research seminar.
Lunch will be provided.
Please email globe@warwick.ac.uk if you have any dietary or access requirements.
The seminar will discuss the reform of international investment law and arbitration, focusing on the role of the investment contract. Through the analysis of some contractual clauses, the lecture will illustrate how the investment contract may be successful in strengthening the sustainability of foreign direct investment (FDI) and making international investment law and arbitration more balanced. It will be argued that contractual provisions may not only give rise to state-investor arbitration, but also ground counterclaims by states in investment treaty arbitration, allowing for new avenues for sustainable development, and more broadly public policy issues, in investor-state arbitration.
About the Speaker:
Dr Sondra Facciois Associate Professor of International Law at the School of International Studies and the Faculty of Law of the University of Trento (Italy). She is an attorney at law, admitted to the Bar of Verona (Italy). She has been a visiting scholar at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, Ernst Mach Scholar at Vienna University-Faculty of Law, and visiting PhD student at Columbia Law School. Her fields of expertise are International investment law and arbitration, Conflict of laws, Arms and dual use items trade regulation. She is currently PI of the EU founded project 'Arms, Peace and Sustainability'. Her research is focusing on the relationship between the regulation of arms and dual use items trade and international investment law.
Lunch will be provided.
Please email globe@warwick.ac.uk if you have any dietary or access requirements.
S.2.09, Warwick Law School, Social Sciences Building
About the Event:
The Law, Technology, and Development Learning Circle brings together staff and students across the University of Warwick who are interested in the regulatory, governance, human rights, and political economy challenges of technology in/and on society. The group is coordinated by the Centre for Law, Regulation and Governance of the Global Economy (GLOBE), Warwick Law School and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM) with the aim to create a space for sharing and discussing research and policy developments.
Through reading groups, events, and policy conversations the group aims to develop cross faculty collaborations that foreground Warwick’s law in context, and interdisciplinary research culture.
For logistical information about the events, please contact globe@warwick.ac.uk
Theme: Digital Vulnerability in Criminal Justice
Thursday, 26 February 2026, 12pm – 2pm R.1.1.3, Ramphal Building
Reading: Digital Vulnerability in Criminal Justice:Vulnerable People and Communication Technologies (2026) Palgrave Macmillan by Carolyn Mackay. This book is available Open Access and can be downloaded via this link.
The discussion will be led by Dr Lorna Cameron, Visiting Research fellow at CIM, and will include a short presentation followed by reflections from participants. You are encouraged to read the book, or part of it, prior to the meeting.
Carolyn McKay’s most recent book, released in January 2026, documents her ARC DECRA–funded project The Digital Criminal Justice Project: Vulnerability and the Digital Subject, begun in 2021 and coinciding with the Covid-19 pandemic and the rapid transformations it brought to criminal justice processes. The study draws on McKay’s observations, interviews, and surveys with criminal justice professionals who make up the trial court, and is therefore primarily an account of professional participation in digitalised proceedings. Lorna Cameron is a recent PhD graduate and Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at Warwick, with an original disciplinary background in architecture and design research.
Lunch will be provided. Please email globe@warwick.ac.uk if you have any dietary or access requirements.
In this seminar, I draw on field work and participatory action research undertaken in Ecuador over three decades to characterise the emerging practice of constitutional rights of nature litigation in Ecuador as a new species of business and human rights (BHR) litigation. I show how the historical and conceptual roots of private law BHR litigation efforts originating in Ecuador are intermingled with the roots of contemporary rights of nature litigation. Over the last decade, constitutional rights of nature litigation in Ecuador has evolved into a useful domestic alternative to transnational tort litigation for business and human rights violations. While very significant implementation challenges remain, rights of nature litigation efforts led by Indigenous and mestizo communities in Ecuador have succeeded in creating new pathways for corporate accountability in natural resources conflicts and land rights struggles. I conclude the seminar by showing how Ecuadorian rights of nature innovations have influenced legal advocacy and litigation strategies in other jurisdictions, including Canada.
About the Speaker:
Dr Malcolm Rogge is lecturer in law at Exeter Law School, University of Exeter. He is business and human rights scholar and practitioner, as well as an international award-winning documentary filmmaker. Dr Rogge is also senior advisor to Ecoforensic, a community interest company that supports rights of nature advocacy through citizen-science initiatives.
Lunch will be provided. Please email globe@warwick.ac.uk if you have any dietary or access requirements.
Join us for a screening of The Tribunal, a powerful documentary by Dr Malcolm Rogge in partnership with the Columbia Centre on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), that shines a light on a significant environmental and social justice battle in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The documentary tracks the experiences of community members in the Intag Valley who were directly impacted by a potential mining project, a dispute that erupted as a result of the project, and the eventual arbitration proceedings in which the Canadian mining company sued the Ecuadorian government under the Canada-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty (BIT). Filmed in the megadiverse Ecuadorian cloud forest, the film brings to light the troubling human rights impacts on local nature defenders of the international investment arbitration system.
The screening will be followed by a discussion with Dr Rogge and Dr Johanna Lorenzo to reflect on the intersections of law, activism, and film and the ongoing struggle to confront corporate impunity and environmental destruction.
About the Speakers:
Dr Malcolm Rogge is lecturer in law at Exeter Law School, University of Exeter. He is business and human rights scholar and practitioner, as well as an international award-winning documentary filmmaker. Dr Rogge is also senior advisor to Ecoforensic, a community interest company that supports rights of nature advocacy through citizen-science initiatives.
Dr Johanna Lorenzo is an Assistant Professor in Public International Law at the University of Amsterdam and the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL). She is currently a Visiting Research fellow at the GLOBE Centre. She specialises in international law and development, international trade law, and the law of international financial institutions (IFIs).
This event is followed by a drinks reception. Please email globe@warwick.ac.uk if you have any dietary or access requirements.
Image: Malcom Rogge filming Julio Espinoza in Ecuador
In the face of growing evidence that climate change and its various adverse impacts have economic origins and consequences, international financial institutions (IFIs) have started paying more attention to environmental issues. The ‘greening’ of the International Monetary Fund (IMF; Fund) – in its current incorporation of climate-related concerns into its legal mandate – is thus neither surprising nor necessarily suspect. The Fund, along with other IFIs such as the World Bank, has previously demonstrated its willingness and ability to evolve and adopt traditionally ‘non-economic’ issues. Further, the IMF’s apparent sensitivity to the social (and now, ecological) implications of its decisions and actions could be seen as an improvement to its long-criticized disregard of the human costs of its interventions, especially in the past relative to the structural adjustment programs. This same track record, however, as well as its perpetuation and institutionalization of inter-State inequalities, justifies scepticism towards the Fund’s recent efforts to integrate climate change issues in its agenda, including its surveillance activities.
This paper sketches a research plan seeking to unpack this phenomenon and investigate the legal issues surrounding a ‘green’ IMF. It asks how the IMF has been incorporating climate change into its mandate and activities, and what the implications are for the obligations and rights of member States, not only within the Fund’s legal regime but also under climate change law. To answer this question, the paper examines the IMF’s publicly available official documents, including its Article IV staff reports, together with reports on climate finance needs, particularly for adaptation in developing countries. The inquiry is divided into sub-questions roughly corresponding to the three parts of the paper. Part I sketches the concepts and instruments underpinning the IMF’s understanding and implementation of its role in relation to climate change. It focuses on the notion of ‘macro-criticality’, which the Fund has previously relied on to rationalise the inclusion of social protection within its mandate. The next part analyses how the IMF’s findings and policy advice during Article IV consultations reflect climate adaptation needs, specifically of climate- and debt-vulnerable countries. In parallel, Part III scrutinises whether those findings and policy advice are consistent with states’ climate mitigation obligations and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC).
There are likely to be some positive outcomes from a green IMF. However, there are also reasons to be sceptical, if not critical, of this shift, considering the persistent structural asymmetries in the Fund’s legal framework and operations. Scholars (and policymakers) therefore need to be cautiously optimistic about this ongoing development, paying particular attention to how the seemingly laudable decision to address climate change could create additional and disproportionate legal and financial burdens for certain member states, such as the poor, already debt-ridden, ones who are at the same time especially climate-vulnerable.
About the Speaker:
Dr Johanna Lorenzo is an Assistant Professor in Public International Law at the University of Amsterdam and the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL). She is currently a Visiting Research fellow at the GLOBE Centre. She specialises in international law and development, international trade law, and the law of international financial institutions (IFIs).
Lunch will be provided. Please email globe@warwick.ac.uk if you have any dietary or access requirements.
