JC Smith Workshop 2025

Workshop Programme

10:30  Tea and Coffee

11:00  Welcome

• Professor Nigel White (Professor of Public International Law and Deputy Head of School (Research), University of Nottingham School of Law)
• Professor Andrea Bianchi (Professor of International Law, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva; JC Smith Scholar 2024/25, University of Nottingham) 

11:30 Panel 1

• Chair: Dr Christy-Shucksmith Wesley (Associate Professor in Law and Co-Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange, University of Nottingham School of Law)
• Professor Gerry Simpson (Professor of Public International Law, LSE Law School)

Refusing to Operationalise, or In Defence of ‘Fancy Intellectual Frames’

• Dr Megan Donaldson (Associate Professor in Public International Law, UCL Faculty of Laws)

Theory and Practice from the Archive

• Dr Matthew Windsor (Associate Professor in Public International Law, University of Nottingham School of Law)

The Pragmattack! On Method for Mandarins

13:00 Lunch

14:00 Panel 2

• Chair: Giserd Marqeshi (Teaching Associate and PhD Candidate, University of Nottingham School of Law
• Professor Akbar Rasulov (Professor of International Law, University of Glasgow)

The Political Economy of ‘Theory’: Knowledge Production, Exclusion, and Neocolonialism in Contemporary International Law

• Dr Devika Hovell (Associate Professor in Public International Law, LSE Law School)

The ‘Collective’ in Collective Security

• Dr Dimitri Van Den Meerssche (Senior Lecturer in Law, Queen Mary University of London)

Beyond the Ideational: Practices of Theory in Algorithmic Times

15:30 Afternoon Tea

16:00 Panel 3

• Chair: Dr Mando Rachovitsa (Associate Professor in Human Rights Law and Deputy Director of the Human Rights Law Centre, University of Nottingham School of Law)
• Dr Tommaso Soave (Assistant Professor, Central European University)

The Politics of Pracademia: Strategic and Self-Serving Deployments of Theory by International Lawyers

• Dr Hemi Mistry (Associate Professor, University of Nottingham School of Law)

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck: reflections on writing an inadvertent “(successful) theoretical paper”

17:15  Final Reflections

• Professor Andrea Bianchi (Professor of International Law, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva; JC Smith Scholar 2024/25, University of Nottingham)
• Dr Matthew Windsor (Associate Professor in Public International Law, University of Nottingham School of Law; JC Smith Workshop Convenor)

17:45 Workshop Close