Empirical Legal Research Network Festival 2026

This ELRN event series explores how empirical legal research can engage interdisciplinarity not simply as collaboration across fields, but as a methodological practice that keeps law visible, critical, and alive within empirical inquiry. Bringing together speakers from across the globe, the series creates space for international and interdisciplinary conversations on how law is studied empirically and how legal research can learn from diverse epistemologies, methods, and forms of engagement.

Beginning with an on-campus session and continuing online, the festival moves from local exchange to global conversation. The opening event offers an opportunity to gather in person over lunch, coffee, tea, and cake before the series opens out to an international programme of speakers and discussions across institutions and geographical contexts.

Each session will feature two 30-minute presentations followed by Q&A and group discussion/breakout rooms, creating space for collective reflection, exchange, and networking across institutions and jurisdictions.

19 June | 1pm–3pm (UK time) | On campus, Moot Court Room, Old College

Participatory and Creative Approaches to Empirical Legal Research

Speakers: Destiny Noble (University of Edinburgh) and Sofia Nakou (University of Edinburgh)

This session examines how participatory and creative methodologies can open up new ways of conducting empirical legal research, inviting reflection on knowledge production, collaboration, and the possibilities of engaging law through alternative methodological practices. Free lunch will be served on arrival.

22 June | 10am–12 noon (UK time) | Online

Researching Indigenous Rights and Refusal in Decolonial Approaches to Empirical Legal Research

Speakers: Sarouche Razi (University of Sydney) and Lena Gross, PhD (Norwegian Institute for Culutral Heritage Research and UiT The Arctic University of Norway)

This session explores decolonial approaches to empirical legal research, with particular attention to Indigenous rights, refusal, and methodological questions surrounding representation, ethics, and the limits of legal inquiry.

24 June | 12:45pm–2:45pm (UK time) | Online

In and Outside of the Courtroom: Empirical Approaches to Studying the Doings of Law

Speakers: Cecilia Nordquist, PhD (University of Lund) and Alessandra Minissale, PhD (University of Oxford and University of Uppsala)

Focusing on law in practice, this session considers empirical approaches to understanding how law is enacted, negotiated, and experienced by legal professionals both within and beyond formal legal spaces.

26 June | 1:00–3:00 (UK time) | Online

Large Scale and Longitudinal Approaches to Empirical Legal Research

Speakers: Signe Askersjö, PhD (University of Gothenburg) and Niina Vuolajärvi, PhD (London School of Economics and Political Science)

This session explores large-scale and longitudinal approaches to empirical legal research, focusing on societal shifts, policy impacts, and how living law is experienced in everyday life. Through examining legal change across time and scale, the session considers how empirical methods can illuminate the relationship between law, social transformation, and everyday lived experience.

We welcome researchers, students, and anyone interested in empirical legal research, interdisciplinary methods, and contemporary debates on studying law in action. Through bringing together perspectives from different methodological traditions and geographical contexts, the festival aims to foster dialogue on the future directions of empirical legal research.

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