CSLS Professor gives the Inaugural lecture at Bristol Socio-Legal Centre

This week saw Linda Mulcahy, Statutory Chair of Socio-Legal Studies at the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, give the inaugural Janine Sargoni lecture to celebrate the life of a much missed socio-legal scholar and the opening of the new Bristol Centre for Socio-Legal Studies.  Linda’s lecture on ‘’Radical lawyering: Rethinking the law and society canon’ was one of the first presentations to draw on a four year AHRC funded oral history of the English and Welsh law centres movement which Linda has been undertaking with Marie Burton at the Oxford Centre.

The lecture provided an opportunity to reflect on the many labels given to law centre workers, who provide free legal advice in disadvantaged communities and campaign for systemic change to address the problems they face.  Reflecting on the event Linda said:

It was a privilege to give the Centre’s inaugural lecture.   Bristol Law Faculty has long been known for its pioneering work in socio-legal studies and has an excellent Masters in the subject which has done a lot to build capacity in the field. This event marks what I hope will be a long-standing friendship between the Centres which share an interest in theoretical informed empirical work and socio-legal methodology.

The Bristol Socio-Legal Centre is directed by Devyani Prabhat and Katherine Wade (shown in the image above with Linda) and aims to be an international centre of excellence for critical scholarship, teaching and public engagement on how the law interacts with society, social change, and social justice and for the development of novel socio-legal and interdisciplinary approaches.