Antonia Layard

Antonia’s research interests are in law and geography where she explores how law, legality and maps construct space, place and ‘the local’. She has particular interests in ‘urban law’, and the legal provisions and practices involved in highways, mobilities and buses. She is currently writing a book, the Paradox of Public Space, which considers how the lack of consistent legal definitions for public space produces tensions for their management, surveillance, privatisation and sites for contested heritage.

Antonia is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences as well as an Academic Member of both the AHRC and ESRC Peer Review Colleges. She has undertaken a number research projects with NGOs, particularly in relation to children, public space, buses and climate change, funded by the AHRC, the ESRC, the University of Bristol and the British Academy. She is an advocate of free buses for children, particularly for children living with economic deprivation. This case is most persuasively in a film made by children at Room 13, as part of The Bus Project.

Antonia is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Law, Property and Society and was on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Law and Society (2010-2020). She also has a longstanding involvement with the Socio-Legal Studies Association including as Vice Chair (2019-21) and is an academic member of the AHRC and the ESRC Peer Review Colleges. 

More information on her research and copies of pre-publication papers can be found at http://antonialayard.com. She tweets very occasionally as @antonialayard.