Legal Futures at The Horniman Museum

Figure 1: Searching for Legal Futures at The Horniman Museum. Image: Amanda Perry-Kessaris adapting images © The Horniman Museum and Gardens.

The Horniman Museum and Gardens consists of a World Gallery, Music Gallery, Aquarium, Library, Animal Walk, Butterfly House, formal and informal Gardens. It is a unique site where living, non-living, and no-longer-living plants, animals, humans, building, and artefacts are explicitly entangled; and where relations with local and transnational social and professional communities are strong. 

How might we use The Horniman Museum and Gardens to develop legal futures capacity among academic researchers; and with what benefits and risks? 

We (Elen Stokes and Amanda Perry-Kessaris) are collaborating with a diverse team of legal scholars to find out:

• Folúkẹ́ Adébísí
• Diamond Ashiagbor
• Shaun McVeigh
• Erika Rackley
• Helen Rutherford
• David M. Scott
• Clare Williams

Process

Perry-Kessaris completed Futures Through Design, a capacity development course at the Royal College of Arts in March 2026.

An Early Career Researcher was selected via an open call for participation in June 2026.

A two day design-driven experimental workshop will be held at The Horniman Museum in September 2026.

The main project outcome will be a Field Guide to Investigating Legal Futures at The Horniman. We envisage this as an accessible, infinitely expandable, resource. It will be designed to ‘help the novice’ (researcher, educator, student, layperson) ‘to rethink and freshly perceive formerly unremarkable objects and actions’ by prompting and facilitating a ‘change in habits of valuing, observing, and in modes of involvement and connection’ (Schlünder 2020). 

Explore

This project builds on prior collaborations with a wide range of scholars:

• Enlivening Law through The Postal Museum (ongoing)
• Bristol Legal Futures (2024)
• Fantasy Legal Exhibitions (2023)
• Pop-Up Museum of Legal Objects (2017)
• Legal Treasure (2012-2017)

Related publications

• Amanda Perry-Kessaris (2021) Doing sociolegal research in design mode. Routledge.
• Elen Stokes (2021) ‘Beyond evidence: Anticipatory regimes in law’ 43:1 Law and Policy 73-91.

Funding and ethics statement

This project is funded by an SLSA Research Grant and governed by the SLSA Statement of Principles of Ethical Research Practice, the University of Bristol Ethics of Research Policy, the University of Kent Research Ethics Policies and Practice.