1. The Oñati Socio-Legal Research Paper Series:
The Oñati Socio-Legal Research Paper Series seeks to be a collaborative research platform run by and for members of the Oñati Community through the International Institute for the Sociology of Law (IISL).
The Oñati Socio-Legal Research Paper Series is a response to the current efforts led by the Oñati Community platform to strengthen the IISL’s scholarly, research and institutional impact. Many research institutes hosted at leading academic centers—for example, The Transnational Law Institute at King's College London, or the Regulatory Institutions Network at the Australian National University—are adopting a ‘research paper series’ format to disseminate their researchers’ work and create opportunities for collaborations, as well as to increase their institutional presence.
The Oñati Socio-Legal Research Paper Series represents a unique opportunity for members of the Oñati Community to:
- 1. Disseminate working-papers and early research.
- 2. Receive feedback from other community members working in related topics and with similar research interests.
- 3. Increase the digital presence and impact of researchers’ work and the IISL’s.
This research paper series differs from the IISL's journal, Oñati Socio-Legal Series as follows: 1) research will be in a ‘working-paper’ format, not finalized journal article (no breach of copyright), 2) only members of the Oñati Community will be invited to contribute, 3) working-papers will be organized in broad ‘research streams’ (e.g., Transitional Justice, Rule of Law and Development, Legal Pluralism), 4) no formal peer-reviewed process, 5) the research series will be open access and distributed via email to the Oñati Community through an institutional SSRN profile.
2. Objectives
The main goal of the Oñati Socio-Legal Research Paper Series is to create opportunities for collaborative research for members of the Oñati Community, thus strengthening the institutional and scholarly impact of IISL and its members. The following are some specific objectives:
- 1. Strengthen IISL intellectual community by publishing as a group of IISL-affiliated scholars/researchers.
- 2. Increase IISL’s online research presence and impact by disseminating research papers through an institutional SSRN account.
- 3. Disseminate the work of IISL-affiliated scholars/researchers (research series tend to receive more downloads than articles in journals because they are distributed through an institution and not a journal).
- 4. Inform and provide access to the network of scholars/researchers of each other’s work
- 5. Create opportunities for collaboration between our researchers, and receive critical feedback from peers as most papers are working-papers, not finalized research.
- 6. Demonstrate that the IISL through the Oñati Community has an active network of world-class researchers.
3. How will it work?
The Oñati Socio-Legal Research Paper Series will be operating under the Oñati Community platform, and working closely with the Oñati Research Forum lead by current Master’s candidates, Leopoldo Cruz Balbuena and Patara McKeen.
The editors of the the Oñati Socio-Legal Research Paper Series will open a call for working-papers four times a year through the Oñati Community platform.
Each research paper series will be organized around broad ‘research streams’, which will allow diversity of topics and research perspectives within one or a combination of two or more broad themes. There will also be a possibility to include a ‘general research stream’ to include other working-papers received for that issue.
Working-papers will be uploaded and made public through an institutional SSRN profile, which will link to the authors’ own researcher profile.
4. About us (series editors)
Shane Chalmers and Valeria Vázquez Guevara have been part of the IISL/Oñati Community since 2014. Valeria was a master’s student in 2014/2015, and a visiting scholar in 2016. Shane has been a visiting scholar in 2014, 2015, and 2016/17.
Short Bios:
Shane Chalmers (IISL’s Visiting Scholar 2014, 2015, 2016/17)
Shane is a Fellow in Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, and a Visiting Fellow in the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) at The Australian National University, where he also completed his PhD (2016).
Shane's doctoral project, titled “Liberia and the Rule of Law”, combined an historical study of the colonial origins and making of Liberia with an empirical study of the everyday life of law in Liberia and law’s role in remaking the nation-state post-war. The research has been published in "Law and Critique", "Law, Culture, and the Humanities", "Humanity", "Law and Literature", "Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law", as well as a forthcoming edited collection on "Law and the Visual" (University of Toronto Press), and a monograph on "Liberia and the Logics of Law".
Shane's current research explores three interrelated areas: (1) the cultural life of the rule of law; (2) law and the economy of appearances; and (3) the logic of capital and the forms of law.
Shane is currently teaching a stream in Legal Theory within the Melbourne Juris Doctor programme.
Contact: shane.chalmers@unimelb.edu.au
More about Shane: http://law.unimelb.edu.au/about/staff/shane-chalmers
Valeria Vázquez Guevara (IISL’s MA 2014/15, and Visiting Scholar 2016)
Valeria is a doctoral scholar at Melbourne Law School, and a member of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities, University of Melbourne.
Valeria’s research is concerned with representations of law and justice in communities that continue to experience the effects of colonization and violent conflict, which build on her personal and professional experiences in the non-profit sector in Spain and the Basque Country, El Salvador, and South Africa. Her doctoral research project aims to contribute to understanding the meaning of ‘living together’ in a context of extreme social and cultural and thus legal diversity, in which communities struggle to come to terms with the consequences of colonialism and what it means to belong to a nation-state.
Valeria’s areas of research are: post-conflict reconciliation theories, international law, decoloniality, law and development, legal aesthetics and legal theory.
Contact: v.vazquezguevara@student.unimelb.edu.au
More about Valeria: https://about.me/valeria.vg
