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,… Continue reading Legal Futures at The Horniman Museum
Category: research through design
Enlivening legal education through The Postal Museum
The Postal Museum repository is alive. Image © Amanda Perry-Kessaris, 2025. How might we use archives and museum collections to enliven legal education? We (Amanda Perry-Kessaris and Emily Allbon) are partnering with Susannah Coster, Access Archivist at The Postal Museum, and a team of academic Collaborators, to find out. The Postal Museum Collections contain over 60,000 objects… Continue reading Enlivening legal education through The Postal Museum
String theory-a conceptual experiment
Figure 1: Toolkit for String theory-a conceptual experiment (c) Amanda Perry-Kessaris 2025. This post introduces an experiment that I designed for as part of a Summer Research Residence on Conceptual Innovation, Methods & Law organised by Davina Cooper at Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London in 2025. For theoretical physicists, 'string theory' is… Continue reading String theory-a conceptual experiment
What if a citizens’ assembly were to design a future Cyprus peace process?
This blog post reports on a 2024 workshop, funded by a Socio-Legal Studies Association Impact Grant. The workshop was first envisaged in a paper prepared for ‘The Socio-Politics of Legal Design and their Epistemic Consequences’ Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of law (IISL) July 4-5 2024 co-ordinated by Siddharth Peter de Souza and Joaquín… Continue reading What if a citizens’ assembly were to design a future Cyprus peace process?
Bristol Legal Futures
This post was co-authored with Elen Stokes and is cross-posted on the University of Bristol Law School Blog. How might we legal scholars develop our capability to work with legal futures? Why ought we to try? These questions lay at the heart of a one-day capacity-building Workshop held at the University of Bristol in July… Continue reading Bristol Legal Futures
Edinburgh Legal Theory Bazaar
A version of this post is appeared on the Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies Blog How might model-making help us to respond to Margaret Davies’ call for ‘a more open, dynamic and responsive understanding of law’—one which understands theorisation less as a formalistic process aimed at conceptual unity, more as an experimental process aimed at conceptual co-existence? … Continue reading Edinburgh Legal Theory Bazaar
Fantasy Legal Exhibitions
This post introduces the Fantasy Legal Exhibitions Project led by Amanda Perry-Kessaris and Victoria Barnes. The aim of the project is to explore exhibition as an actual-potential legal research practice. We use the word ‘fantasy’ for two reasons. First, we want to signal that we hoped to push participants to think beyond what might initially… Continue reading Fantasy Legal Exhibitions
Designerly ways with the future of legal gender?
https://vimeo.com/685965436 In a presentation for the final symposium of the Future of Legal Gender (FLaG) project, held on 09.03.22, I drew on my work at the intersections of law and design to ask: How might designerly ways be used to enhance the long-term objectives and impacts of prefigurative/anticipatory law reform projects such as FLaG? FLaG… Continue reading Designerly ways with the future of legal gender?
Experimenting with the concept of ‘hate crime’ in India
Note: formal findings from this project are now published in Amanda Perry-Kessaris, Mohsin Alam Bhat and Joanna Perry (2023) ‘Conceptual experimentation through design in pedagogical contexts: lessons from an anti-hate crime project in India’ The Law Teacher, DOI: 10.1080/03069400.2023.2275496 This post introduces preliminary findings from the ‘Evidencing and combatting hate crime in India: concepts, mindsets and… Continue reading Experimenting with the concept of ‘hate crime’ in India
How and why might we draw on designerly ways to support conceptual prefiguration in law?
This post summarises my contribution to an online Roundtable on 'Conceptual prefiguration / prefiguring concepts' organised by Davina Cooper as part of the Utopian Legalities, Prefigurative Politics and Radical Governance Collaborative Research Network on October 15, 2021. I have spent the last few years exploring the idea of ‘doing sociolegal research in design mode’. My… Continue reading How and why might we draw on designerly ways to support conceptual prefiguration in law?
