Reading and Reimagining Equality is the first seminar of International Law Outside the Box, the 2020/2021 CELI Peace Talks, the Annual Series of Leicester Law School's Centre for European Law and Internationalisation. The seminar features a stellar panel of speakers: Professor Gerry Simpson (LSE), Professor Vasuki Nesiah (NYU), Dr Francesca Haig (University of Chester) and Dr Loveday Hodson (University of Leicester). The panel shall discuss the value of literary approaches to international law and social justice, looking at how literature and literary approaches to the world can offer insight into in/equality, including poverty of the (international legal) imagination.

For further information please email the convenors, Dr Vidya Kumar and Dr Paolo Vargiu.

About the CELI Peace Talks:

What is the role of public international law and public international lawyers in contemporary society and across the globe? Is international law “fit for purpose” to address the contemporary challenges to its capacities, authority, ambit, relevance and vision in the 21st century? To many of the worlds’ inhabitants, human and non-human, it seems as if “the “world is on fire” – whether the cause of this impression be inter alia the pandemic, climate change, war, persecution, poverty, fascism, displacement or occupation. In light of the ubiquity of oppression and suffering on the planet, do traditional positivist or black-letter approaches to international law need to be revisited, rethought or refashioned, and if so, to what extent, and to what end(s)?

This Annual Speakers Series hosted by Centre of European Law and Internationalisation (CELI) at Leicester Law School (UK) explores answers to these pressing questions by thinking about international law “outside the box”. Throughout 2020-2021, we will hold a series of panels of leading scholars and practitioners offering “Outside the Box” thinking about international law. The “Outside The Box” theme will offer innovative ways to rethink and reimagine international law in light of contemporary challenges, including re-examining the actors, practices, sources, institutions, purposes, effectiveness and enforcement of international law.

The series will host six panels the following salient themes of international legal scholarship and practice:

1) food, the right to sustenance, and the distribution of resources;

2) racism, postcolonialism, and the inherent whiteness of mainstream international law;

3) “inclusion”, “diversity” and the quest for representation;

4) literature and literary approaches to international law-making;

5) international relations its interplay with international law;

6) assassination and the role of violence in the development and maintenance of international law.

Each panel will be carefully curated and open to questions from the audience, moderated by the co-organisers or other international lawyers from Leicester Law School. By offering non- orthodox readings and understandings of international legal subjects, issues and approaches based on their experience and scholarship, our speakers will lead the audience outside the often hidden boxes in the field and practice of international law.