CONFERENCE STREAMS

The Streams provide the Conference sub-themes, helping to put papers in conversation with each other while creating ongoing conversations across sessions.

Those wishing to take part in a stream are welcome to contact stream organisers to discuss ideas and will still need to submit their abstract through the portal in order to be considered as part of the program.

SUBMIT AN ABSTRACT

1. THEATRICAL JURISPRUDENCE AND LAW AS THEATRE

CONVENORS:
Prof. Marett Leiboff, University of Wollongong
Dr Sean Mulcahy, La Trobe University

Email Marett
Email Sean

Theatre and performance embody and demand active attentiveness to the being and doing of seemingly everyday practices and the seemingly simple act of being present. Theatre has also historically and contemporarily been used to expose and challenge injustice, and many prominent lawyers and jurists have theatre experience, including those in apex courts such as Virginia Bell (High Court of Australia), Ketanji Brown Jackson (Supreme Court of the United States), and Ros Atkinson (Supreme Court of Queensland).

Various scholars have brought theatre and performance practices to bear on the law, including dramaturgical practices that ‘use stories of the past to trigger something in us, as legal interpreters, now’ (Leiboff 2016: 93). Theatricalisation or dramatisation of law ‘forces … disorientation, through the provocation created by the encounter’ that ‘twists together the stories of law past through the “nodal knots” of law now’ (ibid 95).

Both law and theatre can operate as an instrument of horror or hope in moments of crisis. Moments of crisis can produce extraordinary theatre that works to challenge law and to provoke reform. This draws on theatre’s capacity to illuminate and challenge injustice in law and political systems marked by extractivism, fascism, authoritarianism, genocide, and institutional decay.

In this stream, we invite contributors to think through law as theatre and theatrical responses to law in different modes, including but not limited to:

  • agitprop theatre or political drama;

  • epic theatre;

  • underground art and theatre;

  • street art and theatre;

  • theatre of the oppressed;

  • forum theatre;

  • legislative theatre;

  • theatre of the grostesque;

  • theatre of the absurd;

  • guerilla theatre; and

  • documentary trial or tribunal theatre

In the spirit of creativity, we particularly welcome creative responses from scholars and practitioners, including but not limited to visual art, creative writing, choreographic and musical scores, and reflective writing – as standalone pieces or embedded in a paper.

2. Watching the Watchers:
Facial Recognition, Biometrics, and the Governance of Surveillance

CONVENOR:
Ceyda İlgen, University of Westminster

Email Ceyda

This stream would invite papers examining the legal, political, cultural, and ethical implications of facial recognition technologies and biometric data within modern systems of governance.

It would welcome interdisciplinary contributions exploring how the human face is transformed into data, how biometric surveillance reshapes legal identity and citizenship, and how law enables, challenges, or resists these developments.

Topics may include facial recognition in policing, borders, welfare systems, urban spaces, and workplaces; algorithmic bias and misidentification; biometric governance and human rights; regulatory responses to surveillance technologies; resistance, counter-surveillance, and democratic accountability; and cultural or theoretical perspectives on the meaning of the face in an age of permanent visibility.

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