Call for papers

CfA: Politics and Law – An Interdisciplinary Dialogue between Social and Legal Sciences

30 juillet 

Staat, Recht und politischer Konflikt

Winter School for Young Scholars
Politics and Law – An Interdisciplinary Dialogue between Social and Legal Sciences
Berlin, 28 – 30 November 2019

Centre Marc Bloch, the Integrated Research Institute Law & Society, both Humboldt University
of Berlin, and the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies of the University of Oxford are welcoming
applications for the first socio-legal Winter School for young scholars to be held in Berlin from 28
to 30 November 2018.

About the Winter School

Law and politics are inseparably intertwined. From a rule-of-law perspective, legal norms regulate
public, and increasingly private, institutions as well as legislative and executive actions. In its
function as an arbiter of the political realm, thus, law seeks to confirm or constrain politics and
the political, its actors, actions, narratives and images. However, legal norms not only regulate
political actions, but social and political actions are also the norms’ precondition. One also must
consider, thus, (legal) norms as socially and historically engrained in institutional settings, at times
as the formal and informal “cultures of law”. Here, the political character of law can be analysed
through a "longue durée" perspective, taking the historicity of law and historic as well as
contemporary battles over the meaning of law into account. The focus on law and politics is one
that explicitly asks for questions of re-distribution in society: who benefits, who loses, who is
harmed?
While jurisprudence holds on an institutional understanding of law and normativity, allegedly
focussing on “law in the books” and legal doctrine only, social sciences such as history, sociology,
anthropology, cultural studies and political sciences have a broader view by looking at the
formation of law in political contexts as well as at its social function and development, sometimes
lacking, however, a doctrinal understanding of positive law.
By combining the different academic perspectives on the implicit and explicit relationship
between law and politics, the Winter School aims at shedding light on respective disciplinary
blind spots, or questions not posed yet, in order to foster a dialogue on different methodological
and theoretical approaches of socio-legal research. By switching perspectives and leaving the
comfort zone of one’s own academic subfield, participants will learn more about the
interdisciplinary potential of their work within the thematic realm of law and politics and, thus,
how to fill the often evoked but rarely applied concept of interdisciplinarity with live.
The Winter School provides a space to discuss the participants’ projects with fellow PhD students
and renowned scholars of socio-legal research from different academic traditions (France, UK,
Germany and the U.S.). Moreover, thematic, methodological and strategic academic topics are
covered by workshops and panel discussions on interdisciplinary working on the relation of law
and politics, the methodological challenges of socio-legal research and writing and publishing in
an international context.

Applications

PhD students from social, cultural and legal sciences as well as the humanities working
theoretically and/or empirically or from the standpoint of legal doctrine on the politics and law
nexus are invited to apply.
The application deadline is 1 September 2019. Please submit your application by email
to: winterschool19@cmb.hu-berlin.de.
Participants will be selected and informed by 15 September 2019. Please note that there will be
a small quota of participates who are selected directly by the organising institutions.
All participants are asked to hand in a poster for the presentation at the Winter School by
1 November 2019.
The event will be conducted in English.

Your application should include
• Letter of motivation (max. 1 page)
• Brief synopsis of your project (max. 1 page)
• CV, including a publication list if applicable (max. 2 pages)

Costs and Fees
There are no application fees. Travel expenses will be refunded within the limits of our budget,
accommodation for attendees not located in Berlin will be provided.

Contacts:
• Centre Marc Bloch, Franco-German Centre for Social Science Research, Humboldt
University of Berlin: Dr. Andrea Kretschmann (kretschmann@cmb.hu-berlin.de)
• Integrated Research Institute Law & Society, Humboldt University of Berlin: Valentin
Feneberg (valentin.feneberg@rewi.hu-berlin.de)
• Centre for Socio-Legal Studies of the University of Oxford: Bettina Lange
(bettina.lange@csls.ox.ac.uk)
 


Contact:

Andrea Kretschmann
kretschmann  ( at )  cmb.hu-berlin.de