STREAMS

This Current Topic invites contributions from across jurisdictions that interrogate how traditional and emerging threats are reshaping security paradigms. In an era of rapid technological change, shifting geopolitics and renewed hybrid conflict, we welcome work that maps intersections between kinetic, digital and informational threats such as AI enabled extremist networks, weaponised deepfakes and vulnerabilities from ubiquitous connectivity and the Internet of Things.

We welcome socio-legal analyses that explore how law, institutions and everyday practices co-produce notions of security and threat, shape intelligence and policing priorities, and affect rights and accountability for marginalised communities. We want to cast the Current Topic broadly so comparative and single country studies, theoretical and empirical analyses, practitioner reflections and technical or policy focused pieces are all encouraged. Contributions from researchers at any stage of their career are welcome. Topics could include state sponsored cyber operations, securitisation, radicalisation in virtual communities, resilience and governance of critical infrastructure and governance challenges of predictive analytics.

We particularly encourage a range of submission types, from five-minute lightning talks and short ideation pieces to longer traditional papers and case studies, all engaging with the intersection of terrorism, security and threats. Convenor Dr Noel McGuirk n.mcguirk@ulster.ac.uk Samantha Stark s.j.stark@lancaster.ac.uk

What can dance do for law and what can law do for dance? Dance in/and/as law is still an emerging field, and this topic, ‘Dance/Law’, opens a space for the burgeoning new scholarship in this field to consider how law is danced in a range of different genres and modes as a form and practice of jurisprudence.

Possible areas of engagement could include, but are not limited to:

• law as dance and dance as law

• dance-based adaptations of law

• the dancing and moving body in law, and legal choreography

• the impacts of the digital and virtual on law’s movement and dance

• dance-based legal research and pedagogy and other arts-based methodologies of legal research and pedagogy

• dance as legal dispute resolution

• dance and legal activism

• dance and/as the staging of law as critique

• queer studies and dance/law

• dance in art and law

• dance, law and the non-human

• speculative movements in dance and law

We particularly welcome creative responses from scholars and practitioners, including but not limited to visual art, creative writing, choreographic and musical scores, and reflective writing – as standalone pieces or embedded in a paper. Convenors Dr Maria Federica Moscati m.f.moscati@sussex.ac.uk Dr Sean Mulcahy s.mulcahy@latrobe.edu.au

Despite our best efforts, we are all going to die. Whether a billionaire or living in poverty, mortality unites us. Death and dying remain of enduring interest to socio-legal scholars and society. From life-preserving medical goals to the treatment of digital remains post-mortem, from assigning value to death to determining responsibility for our remains, death underpins our legal, regulatory, and social frameworks.

Yet, despite its universality, death is highly contested. There is no consensus on when we die, what constitutes a good death, or how involved law should be in ending life. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill highlights this disconnect between legal views on death and wider public attitudes. Emerging technologies, from cryonics to AI griefbots, add further urgency to rethink the law’s role in dying and posthumous life.

This Current Topic welcomes papers exploring themes including:

• Are legal/medical definitions of death (brain death, cardiopulmonary, information-theoretical) still viable?

• How do disability rights, palliative care, and costs shape end-of-life law reform?

• How should law respond to mass death in crises and conflicts?

• What duties exist regarding digital remains and AI’s shaping of death?

• How do we regulate ‘immortality’ services?

• How should law handle contested burials and symbolic uses of the dead?

Convenors Richard B. Gibson r.gibson2@aston.ac.uk

Edina Harbinja e.harbinja@bham.ac.uk

The idea of culture war is increasingly deployed to capture a range of political disputes, often centring around the legal and political treatment of institutions such as the nation or the family. Indeed, among the vast range of topics described as being part of the 'culture war', we can find gender, migration, disability, children's rights, and online safety and security, to name just a few.

However, culture war issues are not just political in nature. Rather, such arguments both occur around and involve implications for law. For example, the idea that a migrant is 'illegal' often functions as a central facet of political arguments for why that person should be denied state protection. In the context of trans rights, similar dynamics can be seen at play with reconfigurations of the ontological and epistemological basis of rights, featuring as a central element in many arguments. In recognition of this, this current topic invites papers which consider the impacts of contemporary 'culture wars' on the function, nature, and operation of law. As well as the discursive and rhetorical deployment of law within other forms of argument.

We welcome papers which explore:

• theoretical conceptualisations of ‘culture war’

• the use of ‘law’ within ‘culture war’ arguments

• the emergence and deployment of pseudo-law in ‘culture war’ contexts

• the impact of ‘culture war’ politics on legal institutions and actors

• the effects of ‘culture war’ arguments on law-making

• conceptions of law in the popular imaginary

• consideration of the jurisprudential and philosophical implications of ‘culture wars’ for the nature and form of law

• the significance and contestation of norms within equality law and human rights law in the context of current moral panics.

Convenors

Dr Alex Powell alex.powell@warwick.ac.uk

Dr Sandra Duffy sandra.duffy@bristol.ac.uk

Dr Max Morris maxmorris@brookes.ac.uk

Legal consciousness research is characterised by its conceptual and methodological diversity. This Current Topic engages with the academic challenges of using the concept of legal consciousness as an analytical framework. This includes (but is not limited to):

• papers which empirically explore how and/or what people understand as ‘law’ (which includes both state and non-state norms) (Hertogh, 2004) in a specific context (country, region, within organisations, sub-cultures, or community)

• papers that use (or propose to use in future research) theories developed by the legal consciousness scholarship as an analytical tool, or make an attempt to advance these frameworks beyond identifying these concepts in their research data

• creative papers that are making use of and building on, for example Ewick and Sibley’s schemas (1998), Hertogh’s legal alienation (2018), relational legal consciousness (for example, Young, 2014), collective dissent (Halliday and Morgan 2013), collective legal consciousness (Kurkchiyan, 2011), or Gill and Creutzfeldt’s (2017) integrated legal consciousness framework

• papers that combine legal consciousness with other concepts and theories. We are interested in papers offering a synthesis between frameworks, especially those that are less know in the English-speaking scholarship

• papers that are exploring people’s legal consciousness in a specific context and have the potential to make broader suggestions for theoretical contributions, or in devising analytical frameworks, that could be used in other contexts.

Convenors

Dr Fanni Gyurko gyurkofanni@gmail.com

Dr Naomi Creutzfeldt n.creutzfeldt@kent.ac.uk

Dr Balázs Fekete fekete.balazs@ajk.elte.hu

Dr Stine Piilgaard Porner Nielsen stineppn@law.aau.dk

Social class is a significant determinant of access to and engagement with law on multiple levels, impacting law school cultures, recruitment and progression in legal professions, including the judiciary, progression in legal careers, availability of legal aid and, consequently, development of substantive legal provisions and caselaw. Despite its legally ‘unprotected’ status, increasing economic inequality renders class critical to current legal debates on the provision of justice across jurisdictions. Yet, it remains a deeply contested concept, rendering further consideration of its impact and operation on legal systems vital.

In this stream, we explore how law produces class inequality and the intersection of class with other identities. We welcome papers exploring areas including, but not limited to:

• legal education and professions – access, progression, culture, professional identity and wellbeing

• the legal academy (working-class legal academics, class segregation of academic roles)

• (in)equality across any substantive legal disciplines

• access to justice/legal services

• theoretical perspectives and lived experiences of social class

• interdisciplinary comparative approaches – sociology, politics, history, etc, and qualitative/quantitative methods.

• If you have any questions about the stream's scope or wish to discuss a possible contribution, contact the stream convenors.

Convenors

Dr Saoirse Enright saoirse.enright@ucd.ie

Rachael O’Connor r.e.oconnor@leeds.ac.uk

Dr Vanessa Long vanessa.long@csls.ox.ac.uk

Clare White clare.white@law.ac.uk

Dr Charlotte Walker c.walker3@yorksj.ac.uk

Chloë Cass chloe.a.cass.2022@mumail.ie

This Current Topic invites critical and interdisciplinary engagement with the legal and societal dimensions of sport. We welcome doctrinal, comparative, and empirical work that explores how sport interacts with structures of power, governance, and identity. Sport is increasingly recognised not only as a mirror of societal norms but also as an influential force in shaping legal, political, and cultural landscapes, thus providing a rich site for examining the intersections between law and social practices at local, national, and global levels.

We seek papers that interrogate how sport reinforces or challenges hierarchies, fosters both inclusion and exclusion, and affects marginalised or vulnerable communities. Areas of interest include:

• human rights violations and mega sporting events

• governance and corruption in international sport bodies

• racial and gender inequalities in access and representation

• the role of athlete activism/rights

• urban displacement and regeneration

• environmental justice

• the commercialisation/commodification of sport

• civil and criminal liability for sports injuries

• the overlap of sport and employment rights including union membership and collective bargaining.

We are particularly interested in contributions that challenge conventional legal frameworks and explore the socio-legal significance of sport as a space of contestation, negotiation, and reform.

Convenors

Dr Seamus Byrne s.byrne@mmu.ac.uk

Dr James Brown james.brown@mmu.ac.uk