Funded Projects

CLS-EN

The CLS Educational Network (CLS-EN) develops an educational collaboration on Critical Legal Studies (CLS) between four Universities. It will produce open-source learning material and teaching practices for pre-graduate law students and will lay the basis for a new European CLS educational network.

CLS can be situated within the ‘law and society’ movement. Unlike an 'internal', doctrinal approach to law, that studies law as an autonomous system, CLS is an ‘external’ approach which examines how law and society interact and influence each other. CLS tends to focus on the political and social power structures that shape legal practices, exploring the ways in which relations of race, gender, ethnicity, class, disability intersect in and through law, to create complex patterns of discrimination and debility. Probably more than any other subject in the field of law, CLS emphasises intercultural awareness, diversity and equality, global challenges, interdisciplinarity, methodological diversity, and critical thinking.

The problem that this project remedies is that students often complain that CLS is too advanced, employs difficult terminology, or uses difficult methods and theories. There is a paucity of law modules which teach CLS in any depth, and lecturers in CLS are often isolated at their own institutions where limited expertise is available among colleagues.

The CLS Educational Network will create new teaching methods and materials for more than 1000 students across the four universities, including methodological guidance for applied pregraduate research. Qualitative improvement in both content and methodologies can further be expected from the knowledge network, based on the familiarisation and intensive collaborations among the teachers and with students.

Participants and Stakeholders

Coordinator

Ruben Wissing
Department of European, Public and International Law, Ghent University

Other Partner Institutions

  • University of Galway
  • University of Tartu
  • University of Bordeaux

Team Composition: 

Illan Wall, School of Law, University of Galway

Katre Luhamaa, School of Law, University of Tartu

David Diallo, School of Law and Political Science, University of Bordeaux

  • University: Ghent University
  • Category: Incubator Grant
  • Period: 2024-2027