Call for Papers: Young Researchers Workshop on "The Significance of Obscured Practices and Subjects: Investigating Silences in Transnational Legal Spaces"

The European International Studies Association (EISA) has issued a call for paper for doctoral candidates and early-career postdoc researcher for the Young Researchers Workshop on "The Significance of Obscured Practices and Subjects: Investigating Silences in Transnational Legal Spaces." The workshop will be held on September 6, 2016, the day prior to EISA’s 10th Pan-European Conference in Izmir, Turkey. Here's the call:

EISA Young Researchers Workshop
Izmir, 6 September 2016

EISA is now inviting proposals for papers for Young Researchers Workshops (YRW) linked to the next EISA Pan-European Conference in Izmir, Turkey. The workshops will be held on 6 September 2016, prior to the main conference. Young Researchers Workshops are one-day workshops organized for doctoral candidates and early career postdoc researchers.

We welcome proposals for papers for the following workshop:

The Significance of Obscured Practices and Subjects:
Investigating Silences in Transnational Legal Spaces

Theme

While research in the field of transnational law is no longer a novel practice, the way in which it is carried out still reflects a more traditional view of legal scholarship. Analyses of treaties, judgments and case notes prevail, while many crucial aspects that make up the transnational legal space remain obscured, for example: the everyday know-how and dispositions of practitioners, the practices of using maps and images in courtrooms, or even the very act of being silent itself. This workshop investigates what it means to focus on the obscured and explores how it is hidden or taken for granted. An important aspect of the workshop is to address how to approach topics that defy traditional legal categories. For example, the future child, homeless EU citizens, and bureaucratic practitioners fall outside familiar categorisations. Studying the obscured evokes both methodological questions, and questions such as: What happens if the attempt to break the silence falls on deaf ears? How does this shift of focus to particular issues bring about its own practices of silencing? Is marking something as ‘understudied’ and shedding light on the obscured a goal in and of itself? The workshop contributions both attempt to make visible what has been ignored, and moreover scrutinize what these blank spots do and how they impact our conceptualisations of international law as a field and practice. Participants contribute with a variety of topics. The interdisciplinary workshop will not primarily focus on the content of this variety, but rather on the common-held question of how and why to research silences in transnational legal spaces. The transnational here can be understood as a plural legal and societal space, which encompasses both the national and the international legal sphere and all elements that fall outside traditional legal structures but that are nevertheless crucial for understanding what ‘the law’ means in a globalizing world.

Format

In the first part of the workshop, participants present each other’s papers. Two senior discussants, including Prof. Nik Rajkovic (Tilburg Law School), will identify common themes and points for discussion. The second part of each workshop session moves beyond the individual papers to address these common interests in a group discussion organised around the themes identified by the discussants.

We welcome 300 word abstracts to be sent to Renske Vos (University of Edinburgh) and Sofia Stolk (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam / Centre for the Politics of Transnational Law) at: r.n.vos@sms.ed.ac.uk by 25 March 2016.