Shajoe J. Lake
Shajoe J. Lake
Year of Entry: 2024
Research: Between Spectre and Spectacle: An Anticolonial Materialist Theory of the International Law
Supervisor(s): Sharifah Sekalala & Christine Schwobel-Patel
shajoe.lake@warwick.ac.uk
Shajoe is PhD candidate at the Centre for Global Health Law, Warwick Law School. His doctoral research develops an anticolonial materialist theory of international law, focusing on the juridifcation of One Health. His project stages a conversation between Marxist commodity form theory, Third World and Caribbean anticolonial thought, and the Black Radical tradition, including abolitionist theory and Afro-pessimism. Across this work, Shajoe is especially interested in understanding the qualitative characteristics of legal form, and he centres questions of Blackness, value and being. Shajoe's project draws on doctrinal analysis, Marxist theory, TWAIL, Black studies, and creative and artistic research methods, foregrounding aesthetics and affective economies.
Shajoe also advises governments on the governance of non-communicable diseases, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and One Health, and developing novel approaches for addressing transnational health threats. He has advised Caribbean and Latin American CSOs and legal practitioners on consumer protection litigation and health and human rights obligations, represented consumers before national standards bodies, supported petitions to constitutional reform commissions on the right to health and adequate food, and drafted reports and position papers for third sector actors on the regulation of food labels in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
He is currently a Research Assistant on two Wellcome Trust–funded projects examining digital health data regulation in Sub-Saharan Africa and the aftermath of death and disease in global health. Previously, at the Digital Transformations for Health Lab, he developed the Y5 Futures Framework to operationalise youth inclusion in digital health and AI governance. He was also an international legal advisor at Global Strategy Lab, Toronto, CA and a research fellow at the O’Neill Institute, Washington, DC, USA.
Shajoe holds an LLB (First Class Honours, UWI), an LLM in Global Health Law (Georgetown), and an MA in Social Science Research (Warwick). He is also a Bloomberg Philanthropies Healthy Food Policy Fellow.