Critical Approaches to Participation in Legal Design

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 13:09:00 GMT

Taking the perspective that legal design is an open, emerging discipline, this workshop critically examines the role of participation in the context of legal design, including foundational theoretical frameworks and associated methods. What, for example, distinguishes legal design from design applied to law? What kinds of knowledge count as legal-design knowledge? How should empirical, experiential, material, visual, spatial, and technological forms of knowledge sit alongside doctrinal and theoretical knowledge? And what might an open canon for legal design look like? Through case studies, discussions, and theoretical presentations, this workshop interrogates and explores whether legal design methodologies are participatory and invites reflections through the lenses of epistemic justice, social-legal studies, participatory action research, and decolonial design. The workshop will consider participation not simply as a methodological technique, but as part of a wider enquiry into power, agency, representation, and the conditions under which people encounter law.

Attention will be given to legal interfaces, spaces, and territories, and to the ways in which design can enable, constrain, or transform participation in legal processes.

This workshop is being organized by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick, UK, and the BC Access to Justice Center for Excellence (ACE), affiliated with the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria, Canada.
It is supported by the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick.

DATE November 2nd, 2026
TIME 9:30 am to 5 pm GMT
Venue: IAS Seminar Room

IAS » Critical Approaches to Participation in Legal Design

Critical Approaches to Participation in Legal Design