Conferences

For information on past conferences, click here

45th Annual Conference of the
Australian and New Zealand
Law and History Society

Dates: Thursday 3 – Saturday 5 December 2026

Location: The University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

Conference theme:

‘Oral sources and Non-traditional legal sources’

Legal historians have traditionally looked to cases, statutes, and juristic literature. Yet the history of law has never been confined to such conventional legal sources. The use of oral sources and non-traditional materials raise important methodological questions for legal historians: what counts as a legal source? and how might law and history be written differently?

The 2026 conference theme invites consideration of oral sources and non-traditional legal sources, in every sense, in the context of law and history. Some conference streams will focus specifically on oral sources, including oral testimony, oral history, memory, storytelling, folklore, and intergenerational transmission. The theme invites participants to reconsider the sources of law and history.

Oral sources are especially important for histories of Indigenous law. We invite papers on tikanga Māori, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander customary law, and practices grounded in kinship, place, obligation, authority, and procedure. Such work may examine how colonial legal systems have misunderstood, appropriated, suppressed, or transformed Indigenous legal knowledge.

The conference also invites engagement with non-traditional legal sources more broadly, including newspapers, petitions, letters, council decisions, archival records, folklore, family histories, demographic material, and socio-economic data. Newspapers, for example, were forums in which trials were reported, in which the reputations of parties could be sensationalised, and by which communities could engage with the law. In essence, newspapers and other non-traditional sources can illuminate how law was experienced in everyday life.

This conference invites participants to explore oral and non-traditional legal sources. Themes may include: the challenges of using oral and non-traditional sources; customary law; the relationship between memory and the law; and the role of non-traditional sources to explore law and society.

Papers are welcome from all periods, jurisdictions, disciplines, and methodological approaches. We also welcome papers that are outside of the conference theme.

This conference is a co-hosted event supported by Monash University and the University of Canterbury.

Call for Paper Guidelines

On behalf of ANZLHS, the Conference Organising Committee cordially invites papers from any period or geographical area, and from all disciplines and fields, including but not limited to law, legal theory, history, political science, indigenous studies, gender studies and law and literature.

Papers are invited on any topic, but the conference organisers particularly welcome abstracts addressing the conference theme of ‘Oral Sources and Non-Traditional Legal Sources’.

Please note presenters must be members of ANZLHS before their papers are presented. You can join or renew here: https://anzlhs.org/join-us/.

An Early Career Researcher (ECR) session will be held on Thursday 3 December 2026. Details will follow.

If you are an ECR, please indicate your interest in attending the session when submitting your abstract. Graduate students may apply for Kercher Scholarships to support their attendance at the conference. Please contact the Organising Committee at anzlhs2026@gmail.com by Monday 6 July 2026 to express interest in this scholarship. Graduate students and other ECRs may also wish to enter for the Forbes Society Prize (see https://anzlhs.org/francis-forbes-society-for-australian-legal-history-annual-prize/). Please notify the conference conveners of your intention to apply for the scholarship at the time of submitting your abstract.

The Society’s peer-reviewed journal law&history (see https://anzlhs.org/journal/) will consider submissions from those who present papers at the conference.

Registration details and accommodation options in Christchurch will follow.

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 anzlhs2026@gmail.com.

We look forward to receiving your abstracts by Monday 6 July 2026. Acceptances will be communicated by 17 August 2026.