The first critical legal geography conference brings together transdisciplinary scholars to discuss the mutual constitution of space and law, broadly conceived. The conference in February 2024 (in Turin, Italy) will be the first of a series of annual meetings on critical legal geography. This open call intends to create a wide space for application and interpretation of critical legal geography. We do not intend to be prescriptive concerning its method, theory, object, or approach. The conference will be an inclusive and dialogical meeting, with a relaxed discussion and exchange of ideas.

Those interested in participating have two options:

• One is to respond to one or more keywords below by proposing a reflection of not more than 500 words (alternatively, also traditional abstracts are also accepted). Name(s), affiliation(s), and short bio(s) (maximum 200 words) of the authors must be included as well.
• The second option is to self-organise and propose a thematic session. In this case, you must submit a broad overview of the session, together with the titles of the contributions (minimum 3, maximum 4), names, affiliations, and short bios of the participants. In the spirit of dialogue and flexibility, if we receive a proposal that better suits a proposed thematic suggestion, we may ask you to make space for the additional presentation.

In selecting abstracts, we will make every effort to reflect diverse perspectives, in particular, from groups which are under-represented. Such considerations will not be limited to gender, race, ethnicity, ability, and economic status, and will take into account intersectional diversity as a whole.

Keywords for reflection:

• energy and extraction
• the rural
• (post)(neo)(settler)colonialism
• more-than-human legal geographies
• the global/the local
• blue legalities
• method
• infrastructures
• anthropocene
• property
• climate change
• land use
• future spaces
• housing
• digital and platform spaces
• migration
• cities/urban
• informality/illegality

Deadlines

Please send reflections on the keywords or a panel proposal to giulia.massenz@polito.it and francesco.chiodelli@unito.it by 15 October 2023. We will respond to all submissions by 15 November 2023.

Date: 21-23 February 2024

Venue: Turin (Castello del Valentino), Italy

No conference fee is requested. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer travel grants to help cover the cost of attending the conference

Steering Group

Francesco Chiodelli (University of Turin); Daniela Morpurgo (Polytechnic University of Turin); Giulia Massenz (Polytechnic University of Turin); Giacomo Pettenati (University of Eastern Piedmont); Voltaire Alvarado (University of Concepción); Tugba Basaran (University of Cambridge); Hadeel Abu Hussein (Utrecht University); Alexandre (Sandy) Kedar (University of Haifa); Austin Kocher (Syracuse University); Gail Lythgoe (University of Edinburgh); Elya Milner (Technical University of Berlin); Matteo Nicolini (University of Verona); Andrea Pavoni (University Institute of Lisbon ).

The conference is supported by: DIST – Interuniversity Department, of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning, the Polytechnic of Turin, and University of Turin. FULL – Future Urban Legacy Lab of the Polytechnic of Turin