Birthday Celebrations at the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies

The Centre for Socio-Legal Studies is celebrating its 50th birthday this year!

At an event this month 90 staff and students who are, or have been, connected to the Centre joined to celebrate this achievement.  Staff from across its history were represented on each of the themed conference panels.  Each was dedicated to discussion of the ways in which particular programmes of research has been established at the Centre, built upon and developed over time.  This included panels dedicated to issues such as access to justice and regulation which had been launched during the early years of the Centre but continue to form a central part of its research portfolio. It also included new programmes of research such as law in a digital world and comparative legal cultures. Opening the conference the Dean of the Oxford Law Faculty, Mindy Chen-Wishart commented on the fact that when established the Centre had initially been perceived as an interesting experiment:

Its work is now funded by the ERC, the ESRC, the AHRC, the Leverhulme Trust, the National Institute for Health Research, the British Academy and the International Association of Pharmaceutical Associations.  The Centre runs two courses on our flagship BCL and a popular course qualitative research methods on the Law Faculty research students training programme. In short it is no longer an interesting experiment but an integral part of everything we do in the Law Faculty.

Other activities planned to celebrate the Centre’s many achievements include the collation of an archive charting its achievements and the gathering together of memories of the Centre.  Full details of these initiatives will be announced in the next few weeks.