Regulating Time: New Perspectives on Regulation, Law and Temporalities
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Kent
Department Name: Kent Law School
Abstract
Questions relating to time are implicated in some of the most compelling contemporary political and social issues. Scholars from a range of disciplines have analysed, for example, the impact of new technologies on how people understand time; how our expectations of the 'life course' have changed with new family forms; and how clinical ideas of time influence decisions in the medical sphere. Similarly, reflecting on temporal concepts and their effects is very important when we think about law's potential in tackling pressing political and social concerns. Yet time remains relatively under-explored in scholarship on regulation and law. In these disciplines, research on time has, to date, been concentrated in only a few key areas, such as labour law (e.g., legal struggles over the working day and 'work-life balance') and environmental law (the question of what regulation can do to help mitigate climate change beyond our own lifetime).
Featuring workshops, collaborative events with NGOs and health service providers, an international conference, and an edited book, this network will support a wider sustained conversation about how regulation and law shapes our experiences of time and how concepts of time influence law and regulation. The network will enable us to advance and deepen research in this area through the cross-fertilisation of ideas and research methods between law and other humanities scholars, and between academics and stakeholders in a range of fields.
The broader public implications of research on regulation and time will be central to the network's activities. Public knowledge about the network will be supported through a website, social media, and via network organisers' appearances in the broadcast or print media. Through collaborative events co-organised with the Terrence Higgins Trust and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, as well as publications and media appearances, we will map how academic research on regulation and time is relevant to current legal and policy challenges. Working with an experienced legislative drafter from the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, and engaging with the Cabinet Office's Good Law project, we will initiate debate about how time is written into legislation and the implications this has for legal clarity. This aspect of the network will facilitate a productive dialogue between researchers, legislative drafters, policy makers, health service professionals, and wider publics, so that we can begin to develop new ideas for research projects and academic-stakeholder engagement.
Whilst we hope that the initial phase of the network will be funded in the proposed form by the AHRC (the subject of the current application), during the life of the network we will solicit suggestions from participants and encourage future collaborative research, other funded projects, and a longer-lasting network. We will devote one session at the final conference to future planning for the network, exploring the potential of applying for funding from the AHRC (Follow-on Funding), Leverhulme Trust (e.g., Research Project or Programme grant if applicable) or COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).
Featuring workshops, collaborative events with NGOs and health service providers, an international conference, and an edited book, this network will support a wider sustained conversation about how regulation and law shapes our experiences of time and how concepts of time influence law and regulation. The network will enable us to advance and deepen research in this area through the cross-fertilisation of ideas and research methods between law and other humanities scholars, and between academics and stakeholders in a range of fields.
The broader public implications of research on regulation and time will be central to the network's activities. Public knowledge about the network will be supported through a website, social media, and via network organisers' appearances in the broadcast or print media. Through collaborative events co-organised with the Terrence Higgins Trust and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, as well as publications and media appearances, we will map how academic research on regulation and time is relevant to current legal and policy challenges. Working with an experienced legislative drafter from the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, and engaging with the Cabinet Office's Good Law project, we will initiate debate about how time is written into legislation and the implications this has for legal clarity. This aspect of the network will facilitate a productive dialogue between researchers, legislative drafters, policy makers, health service professionals, and wider publics, so that we can begin to develop new ideas for research projects and academic-stakeholder engagement.
Whilst we hope that the initial phase of the network will be funded in the proposed form by the AHRC (the subject of the current application), during the life of the network we will solicit suggestions from participants and encourage future collaborative research, other funded projects, and a longer-lasting network. We will devote one session at the final conference to future planning for the network, exploring the potential of applying for funding from the AHRC (Follow-on Funding), Leverhulme Trust (e.g., Research Project or Programme grant if applicable) or COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).
Planned Impact
As detailed in the Pathways to Impact attachment, the Regulating Time network will forge collaborative engagement with a range of key stakeholders, e.g., government lawyers, non-governmental organisations, lawyers, health practitioners, charities, museum and oral history specialists, and an author. Such engagement is at the heart of our research question D: how might academic research on regulation and time learn from stakeholders? How might collaborations between academics and stakeholders in this field engage with, and shape, wider public perspectives on time and regulation?
We have worked with the following stakeholders to ensure joint exploration of these practice-based research questions, with the aim of generating impact in a range of areas during and beyond the initial phase of the network.
1. GOVERNMENT, LEGISLATIVE. The Cabinet Office recently launched its Good Law initiative, aiming to make laws clearer, more effective, and more accessible to non-lawyers in the age of advanced digital technologies and social media. Through our engagement with Hayley Rogers, who leads on this initiative and who will speak at event 1 and act on our AG, the network will be well placed to contribute academic and other stakeholder perspectives on regulation and time to debates about the reform of legislative drafting and data management.
2. POLICY ACTORS AND NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS. Through an event jointly planned with the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT), we will explore how lawyers conceptualise time when addressing HIV-related issues. Featuring academic speakers (including the PI), NGO representatives from THT and beyond, legal advisors and people living with HIV, we will begin a multi-disciplinary conversation, challenging the time-related assumptions that structure legal responses to HIV.
3. HEALTH SERVICE PROVIDERS, PRACTITIONERS, AND PATIENT CHARITIES. An event supported by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (bpas) will engage academics and key stakeholders in conversation about how concepts of time influence the regulation of abortion, considering practical strategies for public engagement in this area. The workshop will feature academic researchers, a lead healthcare practitioner involved in abortion care, a bpas representative, and a relevant patient charity (e.g., Antenatal Results and Choices).
4. MUSEUM AND ORAL HISTORY SPECIALISTS, AUTHORS. Events 1 and 2 will feature museum specialists and oral history experts (e.g. Dr Thomas Lean (Oral History of British Science, British Library)), helping us to explore how museum, oral history, and archiving techniques might shape our understanding of regulation and time. Building on this collaboration, we will discuss with Dr Lean a co-organised feature session on museums and archives in event 4, and other potential initiatives.
The prize winning historical novelist Annabel Lyon will give a feature session in event 4 on the ways in which artists understand and work with the connections between regulation and time (see Case for Support). We will consult with Ms Lyon from the outset on developing collaborative relationships with authors and artists.
5. WIDER PUBLICS. We will publicise network activities to wider publics through broadcast and/or print media, e.g., Radio 4's Thinking Allowed, BBC History magazine. Drawing on the expertise and links of our AG, we will continually assess the opportunity for wider public engagement and communication.
We have worked with the following stakeholders to ensure joint exploration of these practice-based research questions, with the aim of generating impact in a range of areas during and beyond the initial phase of the network.
1. GOVERNMENT, LEGISLATIVE. The Cabinet Office recently launched its Good Law initiative, aiming to make laws clearer, more effective, and more accessible to non-lawyers in the age of advanced digital technologies and social media. Through our engagement with Hayley Rogers, who leads on this initiative and who will speak at event 1 and act on our AG, the network will be well placed to contribute academic and other stakeholder perspectives on regulation and time to debates about the reform of legislative drafting and data management.
2. POLICY ACTORS AND NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS. Through an event jointly planned with the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT), we will explore how lawyers conceptualise time when addressing HIV-related issues. Featuring academic speakers (including the PI), NGO representatives from THT and beyond, legal advisors and people living with HIV, we will begin a multi-disciplinary conversation, challenging the time-related assumptions that structure legal responses to HIV.
3. HEALTH SERVICE PROVIDERS, PRACTITIONERS, AND PATIENT CHARITIES. An event supported by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (bpas) will engage academics and key stakeholders in conversation about how concepts of time influence the regulation of abortion, considering practical strategies for public engagement in this area. The workshop will feature academic researchers, a lead healthcare practitioner involved in abortion care, a bpas representative, and a relevant patient charity (e.g., Antenatal Results and Choices).
4. MUSEUM AND ORAL HISTORY SPECIALISTS, AUTHORS. Events 1 and 2 will feature museum specialists and oral history experts (e.g. Dr Thomas Lean (Oral History of British Science, British Library)), helping us to explore how museum, oral history, and archiving techniques might shape our understanding of regulation and time. Building on this collaboration, we will discuss with Dr Lean a co-organised feature session on museums and archives in event 4, and other potential initiatives.
The prize winning historical novelist Annabel Lyon will give a feature session in event 4 on the ways in which artists understand and work with the connections between regulation and time (see Case for Support). We will consult with Ms Lyon from the outset on developing collaborative relationships with authors and artists.
5. WIDER PUBLICS. We will publicise network activities to wider publics through broadcast and/or print media, e.g., Radio 4's Thinking Allowed, BBC History magazine. Drawing on the expertise and links of our AG, we will continually assess the opportunity for wider public engagement and communication.
Organisations
Publications
Grabham E
(2018)
Exploring Relationships between Time, Law and Social Ordering: A Curated Conversation
in feminists@law
Grabham E
(2018)
On Moving the Table: Reflections on an Author-Meets-Reader Session
in Feminist Legal Studies
| Description | Preparatory research in advance of the current project indicated a wide range of scholarship across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences which touched on issues relating to regulation, law and time but which was not acknowledged as forming a consistent body of research. The events, communications, and wider conversations generated through the Regulating Time research network have formed a strong academic consensus that research in these areas is and should be growing, and ideally should be pursued across interdisciplinary boundaries. Furthermore, the academic and non-academic events have created genuine and sustainable connections between researchers and between academics and stakeholders, which have enhanced the capacity for future collaborations. Below, we outline what we consider to be the significant achievements of the network as alongside our initial objectives. We also briefly consider future plans. Significant Achievements Our significant achievements have included: 1. Generating a sustainable network of scholars working internationally on boundary-crossing academic conversations about law, regulation, time and temporalities by means of targeted academic events, outreach, and social media. We organised 3 well-attended international interdisciplinary events: Diagnosing Legal Temporalities (April 2015; Kent); Time, Regulation and Technoscience (January 2016; York); and The New Legal Temporalities? Discipline and Resistance across Domains of Time (September 2016; Kent). These workshops (and one conference) featured international scholars at the forefront of academic debate on law and time alongside early and mid career scholars from a range of humanities and social sciences disciplines, including law, anthropology, history, sociology, science and technology studies, cultural studies, English literature, politics, and geography. Postgraduate students were funded to attend the April 2015 and September 2016 events through dedicated bursaries. Our wider network of affiliated scholars consists of scholars from across Europe (UK, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Greece), as well as North America (US, Canada), and Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Turkey, and Russia. Ongoing events after the end of the formal network already indicate that academic conversations in this area are vibrant and to a large degree self-sustaining, which was one of our key objectives. 2. Successfully engaging with non-academic stakeholders, artists, and wider publics through one dedicated workshop and collaborative sessions at all events. Our co-organised workshop with the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (London, April 2016) allowed academics and healthcare professionals to share expertise on the regulatory significance of time in abortion law. Hayley Rogers from the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel served as an advisory board member and gave a keynote paper on time and legislative drafting at our first workshop (Diagnosing Legal Temporalities, April 2015). Our final conference in September 2016 featured a plenary session with writer in residence Annabel Lyons, prize-winning Canadian author of The Golden Mean and The Sweet Girl, and artist sessions by Rasheedah Phillips (writer and social justice lawyer, Philadelphia, US) and Carey Young (visual artist, London). 3. A major new co-edited book on law, regulation, and time drawing on, and developing, academic debates fostered through the network. This collection features chapters from significant scholars in the field who gave conference plenaries at network events as well as high quality selected chapters from an open call disseminated through the network in 2015. The book advances new perspectives on the study of time in research on law, regulation, and governance, and highlights cross-cutting conceptual trajectories in the exploration of law's temporalities. Through theoretical and empirical engagement with multiple fields of regulation, the book demonstrates how analysing the temporalities of law can be critical in understanding a range of social justice concerns. Contract signed with the Routledge Social Justice series. Delivery of manuscript in April 2017; publication expected 2018. 4. Wide dissemination of network activities, drawing on a range of social media strategies. Throughout the life of the AHRC funded network, we disseminated details of network events, ongoing research, and collaborative opportunities through our own blog and website, via an active and well-followed twitter account, through a dedicated JISC mail group, and via blog posts on collaborators' platforms. Our bibliographic Zotero resource of interdisciplinary research on topics relating to regulation, law and temporalities has aided network conversations, been particularly useful in developing the edited collection, and remains open for network members and others to contribute further items as new collaborations unfold. Key Objectives Our specific objectives were to: 1. Create a formal international network of scholars engaging with interdisciplinary research on regulation and time, long outlasting the initial period of AHRC funding. 2. Establish 'regulation and time' as a sustainable interdisciplinary field of research within the humanities, consolidating what has hitherto been an un-coordinated range of scholarly concerns, and engaging early career and postgraduate scholars. 3. Initiate and support dialogue between academic researchers, stakeholders, and wider publics about the role of time in pressing social and political debates about regulation. As outlined above, we are confident that the objectives have been met, albeit with some necessary alterations to our original plans. We have supported the development of a vibrant and sustainable new international network of scholars working on interdisciplinary approaches to regulation, law and time. Whilst we currently have not developed plans for obtaining further funding or institutional support to formalise such a network, we will reconsider whether this might be desirable or possible once we have finished on the outputs for the grant (particularly the edited collection). The enormous level of interest and engagement from a wide range of scholars in the network's activities has generated a wide and robust academic interest in this area. Hence, one of the successes of the network may well be that it has obviated the need for future support of the same type as the current funded project - this remains a possibility. In any case, we believe this network has launched a new phase in the study of law, regulation and time, which is in many senses self-sustaining through collaborations and further events resulting from network activities. We will continue to monitor this with respect to our future plans. We adopted a range of strategies to involve postgraduate and early career researchers and these have been successful in ensuring their consistent involvement. Our advisory board benefited from the input of an early career specialist from the Postgraduate and Early Career Network of Researchers; we made postgraduate bursaries available at 3 out of 4 academic events, including the final international conference; we made sure that postgraduates and early career researchers were timetabled in key speaking slots and able to meet with other scholars at speaker dinners; and we held two book launch events at the final conference for early career scholars and activists. |
| Exploitation Route | Academic Audiences and Collaborators We will use the structure of the formal funded network to consult over the coming months about the possibilities for further collaborative activities, and to keep track of new publications and outside collaborations taking place. Given the rapid pace of development in this area, it is possible that any future network would look very different to the AHRC network, which has been more oriented at connecting researchers and fostering new conversations. It may well be that formalising the further study of regulation, law and time might require connected in depth research projects, whether funded or not, or larger scale collaborative research. We continue to assess the ongoing impact of the network on stakeholders and wider publics. Stakeholders, Wider Publics As outlined above, we have consistently collaborated with non-academic stakeholders through dedicated workshop and conference keynotes and sessions, blog posts, one dedicated event, and a social media strategy aimed at targeting a wider public audience. We feel these collaborations have been genuine and useful to all involved. As the network draws to a close, we are assessing the possibilities for further public engagement through print media and broadcasting, based on the specific priorities and themes that have emerged over the past two years and particularly towards the end of the funded project. The website and blog serve as repositories of key information about network activities; we will reassess their structure so as to enhance their appeal to a wide range of audiences. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Government, Democracy and Justice,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | https://www.kent.ac.uk/law/time/ |
| Description | Changing Conversations about Time and Abortion? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | The British Pregnancy Advisory Service hosted and collaborated on this public engagement workshop on law, time, and women's reproductive choice. Abortion law in Scotland, England and Wales provides a compelling illustration of the regulatory significance of concepts of time. Parliamentary and public debate about abortion has routinely focused on a particular temporal issue, namely, the upper gestational limit at which the procedure is provided. Through a series of papers and discussion sessions, this interdisciplinary workshop explored ways of changing conversations about time and abortion. It brought together those with expertise in pro-choice advocacy, in the provision of sexual and reproductive healthcare and in legal, historical and sociological research concerning pregnancy and abortion. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://regulatingtime.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/changing-conversations-about-time-and.html?view=flipcar... |
| Description | Diagnosing Legal Temporalities |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This two day international workshop launched the Regulating Time network and scoped emerging themes in law, regulation, time and temporality. Speakers were asked to address the following questions or prompts: 1. What can the analysis of time and temporalities add to critical and feminist research on law and regulation? 2. Conversely, in the context of a wide range of interdisciplinary scholarship on time, what is specific or distinct about legal approaches to time? Where does law emerge? How is law shaped by, or productive of, temporalities? 3. What theories or perspectives on time provide useful vantage points, from which to analyse and account for law and time? For example, what challenges to current critical legal theories of time are posed by recent work in feminist theory, history, postcolonial theory, critical theories of value, science & technology studies, and theories of vital materialism, for example? 4. How can we use this network over the next two years to advance fruitful new research and collaboration on regulation and time? We had a wonderful, vibrant debate over the course of three days. An opening keynote by Hayley Rogers, a legislative drafting expert and co-ordinator of the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel's "Good Law Project", took us through the intricacies of drafting time into legislation, including concepts of day and night, the year, the leap-year, hours of darkness, and summer time. The following panels provided rich and provocative interventions into the question of how to think time alongside law. A full list of panels and presenters is on our blog post (link below). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://regulatingtime.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/diagnosing-legal-temporalities-workshop_2.html?view=fli... |
| Description | The New Legal Temporalities? Discipline and Resistance across Domains of Time |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Law and governance are intimately entangled with time. This international conference, hosted by the University of Kent at Canterbury Cathedral Lodge, explored time's fraught relationship with law, governance and ordering: the use of time in projects of discipline, the significance of time to resistance, the creation of new temporal horizons and experiences through technological innovation, as well as other themes. The AHRC Regulating Time network invited conference papers, presentations, or art-based engagements focusing on the relationship between law, governance and time, broadly understood. We particularly encouraged the participation of scholars working in disciplines other than law and governance, and legal scholars working with interdisciplinary methods or perspectives. The conference featured papers on a range of topics engaging with the following questions: • What can analysing time and temporalities add to our understanding of law, regulation and governance? • How can we understand the relationship between law, governance and time? What concepts of time help us to trace law's temporal effects, for example? What is specific or distinct about legal approaches within interdisciplinary studies of time? • What role and effects does time have in projects of discipline and control, on the one hand, or in resistance and protest, on the other? In particular, in the context of what some view as an upturn in research on law and time, we invited participants to be critical about what is seen as 'new' about critical legal studies of time in the present moment (acknowledging, for instance, the insights of the legal history movement and longstanding postcolonial critiques of 'universal time'). The conference title, while registering such 'newness', also therefore signalled our hope to subvert it. For further information, please see the blog link below. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | https://www.kent.ac.uk/law/time/events/new-legal-temporalities.html |
| Description | Time, Regulation and Technoscience |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Technoscientific practices are routinely entangled with the temporalities of regulation. This one-day interdisciplinary workshop at the Science and Technology Studies Unit at the University of York sought to generate cross-disciplinary conversation about these dynamics through a series of rich, empirically informed papers from historians, sociologists, socio-legal scholars and anthropologists. For further information, please see the blog link below. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://regulatingtime.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/upcoming-event-time-regulation-and.html?view=flipcard |