Recent years have witnessed a new wave of critical approaches to (re-)thinking the entanglements of law, space and matter. From David Delaney’s ‘nomosphere’ and Peter Sloterdijk’s ‘nomotop’ to Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos’s ‘lawscapes’ and Daniela Gandorfer’s ‘matterphorics’ – scholars working in diverse theoretical traditions have rejuvenated discussions on the substance and materiality of law, and opened new perspectives on the reciprocal materialisation of the legal and the socio-spatial.

Matter matters – all the more in our present age of crises and challenges, which press us towards a renewed critical reckoning with the relation(s) between law, place and space, between spatiolegal representations, discourses, and materialities. In this context, we turn again to “the complex, shifting, and always interpretable blendings of words and worlds” (Delaney) in which law is embedded and unfolds.

For One Day Only brings together a global community of thinkers, scholars and artists for 24 hours of conversations on the moment we are living through and the future we want. Hosted by an international consortium of research centres spanning four continents, the workshop sessions will roll around the world from Canberra and Johannesburg, through Rome, Helsinki and Lucerne, to Virginia and Melbourne. Together, we will showcase cutting-edge work that captures the stakes of critical, theoretical and socio-legal enquiry into the spatialisation of law and the legalisation of space, and which poses fresh challenges for thinking about law’s depth and character, its politics and social resonances.

Further details and programme