How might designerly ways enhance our abilities to understand + meet sociolegal research challenges?

The above presentation was prepared for the Sociolegal Research Cluster at Essex at the invitation of Jaime Lindsey.

It is based on a short monograph entitled Doing sociolegal research in design mode, published by Routledge, which was supported by funding from the Sociolegal Studies Association and the Leverhulme Trust.

In the presentation I begin by setting out some key challenges faced by contemporary sociolegal researchers; and then three ‘designerly ways’ that strike me, a sociolegal researcher, as both characteristic of design and of particular relevance to sociolegal research.

I then give a sense of how these designerly ways might be deployed in a sociolegal context by showing four short films that capture experiments done individually and in collaboration with other sociolegal researchers while I was completing an MA in Graphic Design.

I conclude with some reflections on how any sociolegal research community might begin to introduce designerly ways into its everyday.