CSLS welcomes new student cohort for 2026–27

The Centre for Socio-Legal Studies is delighted to welcome its new student cohort for the 2026–27 academic year.

This year, five new students join the Centre: three MPhil students and two DPhil students. Their projects explore a diverse range of socio-legal questions across different jurisdictions and contexts, from legal pluralism and customary law to international legal practice, industrial policy and environmental justice.

MPhil Students

Ella Bostock-Smith – Culture in International Legal Practice: How Janteloven Shapes Norway’s Multilateral Argumentation

Arinne Fatum – Sulha After 7 October: Reconciliation, Violence, and Legal Pluralism in Arab Communities in Israel

Hamza Khan – The Transition from Customary Law to a State-Centred Legal Order in Pakistan’s Former Federally Administered Tribal Areas

DPhil Students

Tolulope Ayanbola – The Everyday Making of Industrial Policy in Nigeria: A Socio-Legal Study of Policymakers’ Practices

Karla Bayas Velastegui – Law as a Sacrificial Zone: Necropolitics, Environmental Racism, and the Legal Production of Ecocide and Human Wastelands in Ecuador

We are delighted to welcome Ella, Arinne, Hamza, Tolulope and Karla to CSLS and look forward to the perspectives and ideas they will bring to our research community.

Over the coming year, they will take part in the Centre’s seminars, research training and wider activities, contributing to the interdisciplinary and collaborative intellectual life of CSLS.

Welcome to CSLS!