Anarchy is the Theme for St Mary’s Centre for Law and Culture Conference 2017

Marking the start of the new academic year for St Mary’s University, Twickenham, St Mary’s Centre for Law and Culture this September facilitated a topical discussion that crossed disciplinary, geographic, academic, and conceptual boundaries, on the significance of anarchy in relation to law, culture, and theory.

Addressing pertinent questions, such as: What does it mean to break the world? What is legitimate resistance to state power? When does authority spill over into repression? What is anarchy’s relationship to chaos and disorder? The event, which welcomed 18 delegates to St Mary’s Strawberry Hill, campus touched upon anarchies of the state, anarchies of the subject, and anarchies of thought.

With seven separate panel sessions—chaired by St Mary’s academics: Dr Judith Bourne; Dr Thomas Giddens; Luke Mason; and Dr Aislinn O’Connell. The event also featured a Keynote speech from Prof Adam Gearey, Professor of Law at Birkbeck, University of London: ‘“The brightest powers of sympathy and the readiest powers of action”: Anarchy, Culture, Ethics’.

Dr Judith Bourne commented, “It was a pleasure to welcome so many distinguished colleagues to join our conference earlier this month. The topic of anarchy certainly led to lively discussion, and provoked a number of points which are topically very relevant to the world today.

 “I am sure our colleagues, who represented academic, commercial, and charitable institutions on the day, found the event insightful. At St Mary’s we are looking forward to further debating these issues with our students as our new academic year begins.”

The Centre for Law and Culture is an interdisciplinary hub for research at the intersections of law, justice, and the humanities, engaging legal study that spans topics and themes from across critical and cultural legal studies and thereby incubating and promoting the crossing and challenging of legal boundaries.