Dates: 17-20 November 2024

Faculty of Law and Justice, UNSW Sydney

Conference Theme: Change and Continuity

Due date for conference abstracts:  31 July

Acceptance date:  15 September

Program: To be advised later in the year

Format: In-person/Face to face; some online attendance will be available.

Registration: Registration will be opened later in the year.

Keynote speakers: Professor Lisa Ford, School of Humanities & Languages, UNSW Sydney; Professor Warren Swain, Auckland Law School, University of Auckland|Waipapa Taumata Rau; and Professor John Page, Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney

Accommodation: Accommodation options in the Sydney CBD and Eastern Suburbs will be advised before registration later in the year.

An Early Career Researcher (ECR) session will be held on 17 November 2024. If you are an ECR, please indicate your interest in attending the session on your submission.

Call for Paper Guidelines

Papers are invited on any topic, but the conference organisers (Prof. Prue Vines, Prof. John Page and Dr. Henry Kha) particularly welcome abstracts that address the broad themes of ‘Change and Continuity’. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words, and should be accompanied by a short biography (100 words). Panel submissions are also warmly encouraged. Submissions should be sent to anzlhs2024@gmail.com

Conference Theme

Conference abstracts are invited to engage with the themes, tensions, and dynamics of change and continuity across law and history.

Change and continuity are recurring themes in law and history, the inexorably shifting ebbs and flows as society and its laws adapt to the dynamic contours of space, place, and time; and the physical and metaphysical influences of context. Change presages reform, disruption, and transformation, while continuity assures of stability, permanence, or the perceived comfort of incremental ‘progress’. Change and continuity appear as polar opposites, and they often are, yet at times, they also complement each other, speaking to latent tensions that are both coherent and incoherent and compatible and incompatible, often at the same time.

Change and continuity also remind us of circularity and relativity. As the truism goes, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’, yet often, it seems that time speeds up (change) while on occasions, it passes more slowly (continuity). Or change and continuity are simply different gears on an erstwhile linear trajectory, where each co-informs and co-constitutes an ongoing confluence of legalities and histories.

We look forward to receiving your abstracts by 31 July. Please send them to anzlhs2024@gmail.com