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Thursday, 7 June 2018 - 5.15pm
Location: 
Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, Finley Library

Lecture summary: This paper will discuss the relationship between the uses and forms of history within international law and questions of method in the development of histories of international law. It focuses on the advantages of genealogy as an approach to the history of international law given its capacity to both explain the way in which the law itself makes use of the past and intervene in this. Elaborating on the compatibility between genealogy and elements of the contextual approach to history associated with the ‘Cambridge School’, the paper challenges recent suggestions that anachronism is irrelevant, unavoidable, or even a ‘method’ that might be fruitfully embraced in studies of international law’s past directed towards explaining and potentially altering its present. It will be argued that historians of international law should take the dangers of anachronism seriously, particularly if the histories they develop are to operate as a form of critique and basis for change.

For a copy of the paper (available one week in advance), or to join the seminar mailing list, please contact md718@cam.ac.uk.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Dr Kate Purcell is Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Law, University of Technology, Sydney; and currently a Visiting Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law.

This session is part of the Legal Histories beyond the State work-in-progress seminar series.

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