Lauren Crais

Lauren is a third-year DPhil research student investigating intellectual property theory in dialogue with cultural heritage law under the supervision of Dr Dev Gangjee and Dr Emily Hudson. Her work theorizes the roles of authenticity, cultural heritage, and credit in elite British kitchen spaces to better understand how we might more effectively frame issues of cultural influence and inspiration. 

From 2022-2024, she co-convened the Intellectual Property Discussion Group. She held a research residency with the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights in 2023. She has previously served as the General Editor of the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal, where she has also been a member of the Executive Board and an associate editor.

Lauren was the research assistant for a special issue of the European Labour Law Journal, edited by Professor Jeremias Adams-Prassl and the ERC-funded iManage Project team. She has also acted as a research assistant for the forthcoming volumes Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Global Inequality (edited by Professor Daniel Benoliel of the University of Haifa Faculty of Law; Francis Gurry, the director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) from 2008 to 2020; Professor Keun Lee of the department of economics at Seoul National University in South Korea; and Regents Professor Peter Yu of Texas A&M University) and The Internal Market Ideal: Essays in Honour of Stephen Weatherill (edited by Professors Sanja Bogojevic, Jeremias Adams-Prassl, Ariel Ezrachi, and Dorota Leczykiewicz of the University of Oxford).

Before commencing her DPhil, Lauren was Head of Study for Law at Christie's Education London (in association with the Open University and the University of Glasgow). She wrote the law modules for the MSc in Art, Law and Business and gave lectures, tutorials, and thesis supervision on subjects including art world practice and ethics, constitutional law, contract law, corporate regulation, criminal law, cultural heritage law, freedom of expression, intellectual property law, international trade, museum law, restitution and repatriation, and tort law. She has served as the external examiner for LLM modules in Art Law and Cultural Heritage and Property Law at the London School of Economics & Political Science. She frequently lectures at LSE, Kingston University, and the Royal Academy of Arts, amongst others. 

Prior to this, Lauren was a Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles County, California, where she prosecuted crimes ranging from misdemeanors to murder. She has been called to the Bar in California (2006) and before the United States Supreme Court (2016). 

Lauren earned her bachelor's degree in History of Art with minors in Psychology and French from Duke University (NC, USA), her Juris Doctor from Georgetown University (Washington, DC, USA), and her MSc from the University of Glasgow (Glasgow, Scotland, UK).