Queen’s University Belfast PhD Law Conference, 29 June 2023. 

  

On Thursday, 29th June, Law PhD students came together for a one-day conference in The Moot Court at Queen’s School of Law. The event was organised by Dr Alessandra Guida and convened and coordinated by Daniela Janikova with some assistance from Carolyn McDowell. Thank you to all the organisers, including Janine Geddis, for compiling the research presentations in advance, which enabled the event to proceed so smoothly, and to Amanda Gray Meral for all her help organising. Thank you kindly to Dr Billy Melo Araujo, Dr Marisa McVey, Dr Eugene C Lim, and Dr Clayton O'Neill for brilliantly chairing our events, posing thoughtful questions, and keeping the speakers on time. 

  

The event saw four panels of speakers, with two panels in the morning session and two in the afternoon. The morning sessions explored new legal challenges and critical approaches to international law. The afternoon talks looked at Trade & IP Law, and sustainable development. The last session of the day explored restorative and transitional justice issues.  

  

The talks were delivered by current PhD students, many of them in the early phase of their studies, so the event served as an excellent forum for budding academics to alert others to their chosen field of study and test the key premise and theories of their topics. In many cases, this conference was their first opportunity to present their topic, and for that reason, the constructive and collegiate atmosphere of the day made it a valuable opportunity for researchers to receive feedback from their peers. 

  

 The talks were enjoyed by the audience too. We have selected a small number of the talks for reflection to give you a flavour of the day. You can find a full list of the speakers and their chosen topics at this link. In the first session, James Sweeney’s analogy of the Trojan Horse in the Greek siege of Troy was well received. James took us on a metaphorical journey that likened the Trojan horse, in the tale, to modern artificial intelligence, which is increasingly hardwired into the technology and software that we use. Sweeney posed the question of whose job it is to regulate it, the user, the owner, or the government? 

  

In the second panel, Amanda Gray Meral explored the role and duty of feminist scholars to involve themselves more in the study of rights for refugees. Amanda asked the audience to use feminism as an analytical tool to shine a lens on the treatment of refugees at the hands of governments under international law, especially in human rights violations. Meral made the point that every researcher is saddled with their subjectivity and that it is important to be aware of that and embrace it.  

  

In our third session, Gary Simpson delivered a thought-provoking talk on how devolution, including in, for example, the context of Northern Ireland, poses extra challenges for regulatory policy-making, especially in international trade. Simpson argued that decentralised policy-making makes the UK’s regulatory trade framework, especially with the EU, unworkable. Gary, responding to questions, did acknowledge that critiquing existing frameworks was more straightforward than devising fresh solutions.  

  

Daniela Janikova’s paper was also very well received. Janikova proposed that trade deals would work better if sub-national entities, for example - provinces or regions, were involved in the initial trade negotiations. Janikova explained the theory of embedded liberalism to the audience and pondered whether the appetite or conditions were in place for a rebooted embedded liberalism, 2.0. During questioning, Daniela cited the example of Wallonia in renegotiating the CETA trade deal between the EU and Canada as a good example of her solution in practice.  

  

The last session of the day continued to the same high standard. Drawing from the author’s ongoing PhD research, Mathew McCallion’s research paper examined the methods of assessment of the criminal liability of autistic defendants. McCallion judged existing practices problematic since they failed to account for autistic traits and thought processes when assessing criminal liability. McCallion explored an alternative lens for determining the criminal liability of autistic defendants based on principles emanating from the so-called ‘neurodiversity paradigm.’ 

 

The day was a wonderful opportunity for early career researchers to come together as peers to support one another and to offer some constructive advice on respective projects. It continued the School of Law’s great tradition of opening space for our PhD Students to develop their presentation skills and experience at fielding questions in a live academic setting. We look forward to hosting many more and once again thank all the participants for contributing to a memorable day.  

Alessandra Guida