Regulatory imagination and the challenge of interdisciplinarity

In Hilary Term 2012, the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies is launching the Regulation Discussion Group, organised by Dr. Bettina Lange, Asma Vranaki, Andres Gonzalez-Watty and Frances Foster-Thorpe. The group provides a forum for all interested individuals to analyse regulatory practice from a theoretical, empirical, and public policy perspective. It seeks to facilitate cross-disciplinary debate about regulation among lawyers, sociologists, political scientists and economists. The group also organises ‘reading group’ and ‘work in progress’ sessions which will also support graduate students’ works in the field of regulation by providing them with a forum to network and discuss cutting edge regulation research. For its launch, the RDG is presenting a seminar series, during Hilary and Trinity Terms 2012, on the ‘regulatory imagination’. The series explores regulatory practices, as they are experienced by citizens, regulators and regulated organizations in the context of the wider political, economic and social projects in which regulation is embedded. The seminars start from the idea that both regulation scholarship and regulatory practice are informed by a regulatory imagination. Thus, the purpose of the seminar series is to explore the following questions: • What political and economic ideas as well as disciplinary orientations inform regulatory imagination? • Who participates in the development of regulatory imagination? What is the role of citizens, public administrators, regulated organizations and experts in developing it? • What, if any, is the critical potential of regulatory imagination? How does it relate to social change? You are all welcome to attend our sessions which will be followed by wine and nibbles!