The Society’s journal, Area, has this week published a new special section: Practising legal geography.
Guest edited by Katherine Brickell (Royal Holloway University of London), Alex Jeffrey (University of Cambridge) and Fiona McConnell (University of Oxford) the special section looks at the ways in which focussing on ‘practice’ can deepen our understandings of legal geography. As the editors write: ‘There is a deeply intertwined relationship between the legal work done by geographers, and an individual’s identity and practices as a professional geographer’ and this is something ‘that warrants more detailed attention in the years to come.’ The special section in part seeks to begin this conversation.
Legal geography, through its engagements with the ways in which law is constructed, enforced and deliberated on in different spaces and places, is a growing area of research, and one that can play a crucial role in allowing geographers to contribute to policy and law making. Through the papers contained within it, the practising legal geography special section demonstrates this potential across a variety of settings.
Alongside the editorial introduction by the guest editors, the special section consists of seven papers:
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Practising feminist politics in legal geographic research by Dana Cuomo (Lafayette College)
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Courtwatching: Visibility, publicness, witnessing, and embodiment in legal activism by Nick Gill and Jo Hynes (both University of Exeter)
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What next for courtroom special measures? Embodying legal geographies through ‘appreciative-assemblage’ methodology by Catherine Traynor and Philippa Tomczak (both University of Nottingham)
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Event(ful) spaces of organised legal encounter: Reflections from a client consultation competition on domestic violence law in Cambodia by Katherine Brickell (Royal Holloway University of London)
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Practical engagements in legal geography: Collaborative feminist approaches to immigration advocacy in Denmark by Malene H. Jacobsen (Maynooth University)
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Trespassing on the Law: Critical legal engineering as a strategy for action research by Joanna Kusiak (University of Cambridge)
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Reconsidering law at the edge: How and why do place-managers balance thrill and compliance at outdoor attraction sites? by Luke Bennett (Sheffield Hallam University)
The special section has been published in Volume 53, Issue 4 of Area, which also contains papers on a variety of other topics, including the experiences of using indoor-outdoor activity centres, the future of mining in Africa, using LinkedIn as a research tool, and the emotional journeys undertaken by young climate activists. The issue also contains a new editorial from the Area editors on physical and environmental geographies.
Read the latest issue of Area
The latest issue of Area is free for Fellows to read online, when accessed through the Members’ Area of the Society’s website.
For more information about the Society’s academic publications, please see here.