‘Resistant Transitions? Debating the Future of Legal Gender’, 20 May 2022, Loughborough University. Prof Elizabeth Peel, Prof Davina Cooper, and Dr Flora Renz discussed for Loughborough’s Institute of Advanced Studies Festival of Ideas.
The Future of Legal Gender and the Challenge of Prefigurative Law Reform, 9 March 2022 (online). We hosted a a concluding academic workshop to discuss our key findings and the broader promises and challenges of prefigurative law reform. Project members gave papers on their strands of the project, alongside a paper by Prof Amanda Perry-Kessaris on socio-legal design, and a roundtable on ‘Naming Inequalities in Law’.
Abolishing legal sex status: A help or hindrance to gender equality? 24 March 2022 (online). We hosted a public webinar to present our key findings and explain what the law could look like if people’s sex and gender, in Britain, was no longer registered and accorded legal status.
‘A future without legal gender? Findings from a UK survey and interview study.’ Newman, H. and Peel, E. 5th International Conference on Gender Research. 28-29 April 2022, University of Aveiro, Portugal (virtual).
Decertification: What can removing sex from legal personhood do? 10 November 2021. Keele University (online). Davina Cooper and Flora Renz will speak at the GSL Kitchen Table on the challenge of researching gender politics in the present climate; contemporary conflicts over gender-specific provision in the domestic violence arena, and the methodological value of prefigurative law, which acts as if a future imaginary legal proposal was already on the law reform table.
Acting as If: Prefigurative Politics in Theory and Practice. 23 October 2021. Davina Cooper was a keynote speaker at this workshop on prefigurative politics hosted by the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences with a paper entitled ‘DIY law reform: Gender politics and the challenge of experimental law’.
‘A feminist future for legal gender? Foregrounding non-binary perspectives’. 7-9 July 2021. Liz Peel and Han Newman presented their findings at BPS Psychology of Women and Equalities Section Conference.
International Roundtable on Decertification. 28 June 2021. Jess Smith held a roundtable with early career researchers to explore decertification from a transnational perspective.
The Future of Legal Gender: What could decertification look like? 28 June 2021. Flora Renz gave an overview of our findings to Finsbury Glover Hering.
“An impossible dream”?: Non-binary people’s perceptions of legal gender status and reform. 25 June 2021. Liz Peel and Han Newman presented their findings at the BPS Psychology of Sexualities Section Conference.
Decertifying legal sex/gender status. 11 May 2021. Davina Cooper discussed the challenges and complexities of conducting a prefigurative law reform project that is about decertifying legal sex/gender status. Malmö University, Collaborative Future-Making seminar series.
Economic imaginaries and the withdrawal of state law from determining sex. 17 March 2021. Davina Cooper spoke at this virtual seminar hosted by the Centre for Law and Social Justice, University of Leeds.
Sex-based rights v gender-as-identity: The challenge for contemporary feminism. 17 February 2021. Discussion organised by the LEX network. This facilitated discussion, with an introduction from Davina Cooper, explored core dimensions of sex-based rights feminism and gender-as-identity. These two frameworks, currently locked into a divisive dispute, have come to dominate gender politics in the UK. What are their differences and common ground, why have they emerged in the recent period, what gender perspectives and politics have become marginalised as a result, and what might feminist aspirations for gender’s futures be?
Panel discussion to mark the launch of a special issue of feminists@law on The Future of Legal Gender: Exploring the Feminist Politics of Decertification. 19 Jan 2021. This virtual panel discussion, jointly hosted with the Centre for Sexuality, Race and Gender Justice (SeRGJ) at the University of Kent, marked the launch of a special issue of feminists@law on our research. A podcast of the presentations is available on the project’s soundcloud.
Prefiguring law: the politics of experimenting with feminist law reform. 4 Dec 2020. Davina Cooper gave this virtual talk as part of the Law Gender Bodies Text online discussion series, hosted by Valeria Venditti (UCC) .
Designing law as a critical object. 2 Dec 2020. Davina Cooper was hosted by the Irish Sexualities & Genders Research Network for this virtual discussion. Details here.
Rethinking gender through disability. 27 Nov 2020. Flora Renz discussed this topic as part of the Law Gender Bodies Text online discussion series, hosted by Valeria Venditti (UCC).
Should state law withdraw from registering and assigning sex? The feminist politics of decertification and prefigurative law reform. 11 Nov 2020. Oxford Brookes University, School of Law Seminar Series. Speaker: Davina Cooper. Discussant: Lucy Vickers.
The Fawcett Society, East London group. Virtual monthly meeting. 2 June 2020. Davina Cooper was invited as a guest speaker to talk about the project and questions around gender. Details here.
Findings to date, and the ideas behind the Future of Legal Gender project. 5 Feb 2020. Law Research Seminar Series. Birkbeck. University of London. Flora Renz. Details here.
What if the state no longer sexed us? Prefiguring Gender’s Legal Reform. 22 Jan 2019. Emory University, Atlanta, USA. Davina Cooper.
What if the state no longer sexed us? The implications of reforming legal gender status. 8 November 2019. King’s College London. Part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science, 2-9 November 2019.
What if the state no longer sexed us? 30 October 2019. LSE, Department of Gender Studies. London. Davina Cooper, with Dr Magdalena Mikulak and Dr Jacob Breslow chairing. Details here.
The Future of Legal Gender. 19 Sept 2019. Institute for Feminist Legal Studies, Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, Canada. Davina Cooper. Details here.
Thinking about gender through other socio-legal categories. 18 Sept 2019. McMaster University School of Labour Studies, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Flora Renz. Details here.
What if the state no longer sexed us? The political implications of abandoning a regime of assigned sex/gender status. 6 Sept 2019. Department of Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Davina Cooper presented this paper as part of the JurisTalk series. Responses were given by Ann Cvetovich (Director, Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies), Stacy Douglas (Law and Legal Studies) and Lara Karaian (Criminology and Criminal Justice). Details here.
What if the state no longer sexed us? The Centre for Feminist Legal Studies, University of British Columbia, Canada. 27 Aug 2019. Davina Cooper. Further details here.
Academic Colloquium. King’s College London. 20 June 2019.
On 20 June 2019, the FLaG team hosted an academic colloquium, to discuss some of the early analysis arising from the different strands of the project, in conversation with critical, interdisciplinary, theoretically-engaged academic scholarship. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the discussion throughout the day.
Special thanks to our panelists – Diamond Ashiagbor, Shona Hunter, Sumi Madhok, Ambreena Manji, Vannesa Munro, Alain Pottage, Christine Quinan, Yvette Taylor, Tessa Wright and Helen Xanthaki – for responding to the team’s papers and taking part in the panel discussions. An open discussion on fluctuating intensities: thinking about gender through other socio-legal categories was also very interesting (see Flora Renz’s blog for the SLSA).
Roundtable on the Future of Legal Gender Project. Socio-Legal Studies Association. 2019 Annual Conference. Leeds. 3 April 2019. Roundable presented by Davina Cooper, Robyn Emerton and Flora Renz.
A Very Binary Drama: The Conceptual Struggle for Gender’s Future. University of Helsinki. 27 March 2019. Davina Cooper with discussant Tuilja Pulkkinen (above).
Making Up a World: Prefiguration, Play and the Enactment of New Facts. King’s College London. 13 March 2019. ( KCL event) Inaugural lecture by Davina Cooper (above).
A Very Binary Drama: The Conceptual Struggle for Gender’s Future. University of Sussex. 6 March 2019. Public lecture by Davina Cooper.
Gender, Craft, Law and Politics: Notes for an Ethnography of Legislative Drafting. University of Oxford. 25 Feb 2019. Seminar by Emily Grabham.
Older People’s Attitudes to Gender. University of Malta. 21 Feb 2019. Public lecture by Elizabeth Peel (above).
Joint seminar with EDF (Equally Ours). King’s College London. 9 Oct 2018.
On 9 October 2018, FLaG co-hosted its first event at The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London, with the Equality and Diversity Forum, a national network of organisations working across all areas of equality and human rights (now called Equally Ours). Around 35 EDF members attended, including organisations working in the fields of healthcare, housing and education, and those focusing on equality for women, people with disabilities, the elderly and LGBT people. For further details and photographs see here.