Across universities and cultural institutions, there is a growing recognition that the discipline of “law” does not operate in isolation. It shapes and is shaped by the histories, languages, communities, and social practices that surround it. Researchers in the humanities are drawing attention to these connections, showing how legal frameworks structure social practices and how culture, in turn, influences legal thinking.

To explore the expanding intersections between legal and humanistic enquiry, James Campbell (LHub and University of Oxford) sat down with and Dr. Lucy Finchett-Maddock (Art/Law Network), Dr. James Greenwood-Reeves (University of Leeds), and Dr. Emma Patchett (Northumbria University). They discussed how cross-disciplinary exchanges between Law and the Humanities reshape our understanding of what law is and does and the role mapping can play in strengthening its interdisciplinarity.

Their conversation covered an expansive landscape of methods and critical approaches, moving from the narrative power of Law and Literature to the performative subversion of Law’s a Drag, and the intersection of Art and Law. What emerges is a body of work that is deliberately wide-ranging and resistant to fixed definitions. The field’s breadth proves to be essential for understanding how justice operates in lived contexts. As the group discussed, Law and the Humanities must cater to the multiplicity and diversity that exists across the various settings in which law operates.

Dr. Finchett-Maddock notes that embracing the variety of the discipline can entail “engaging outside the classroom or engaging outside of just the scholarly environment,” whether that be through activism, legal practice, artistic collaboration, and performance-based practice.

Redefining Law as “Human Endeavour”

What became clear across the conversation was that Law and the Humanities as a field resists narrow definitions. The field’s openness is reflective of a wider movement in research and higher education policy towards cross-disciplinary work that accommodates complexity. As per a Campus Times Higher Education piece, “true interdisciplinarity is messy, disruptive and difficult to manage, but it is also where the best revolutionary ideas come from” (Harris 2022).

For Dr. Greenwood-Reeves, “within law and the humanities, you have almost all human endeavour,” viewing the field as open and textured… so expansive and changeable,” evolving alongside the sociocultural and political contexts in which legal ideas circulate.

Within mainstream jurisprudence, legal positivism has often presented law as a value-neutral system of rules (Marmor 2006). The ethos animating Law and the Humanities scholarship is partly seen as a call for a “humanities of resistance,” opening up the “critical possibilities” that positivist accounts close off (Douzinas 2010). The field also returns to the basics of how we study humanity, treating law as a central locus of collective thought and organisation.

Dr. Patchett echoes the field’s resistance to rigid definitions, arguing that scholars must push against “the idea of law as a functional mechanism that is prescriptive and neutral.” Instead, she posits that “law is narrative. It’s a series of stories that we tell ourselves about the way the world is.”

Law and the Humanities’ narrative approach is not limited to text. For Dr. Finchett-Maddock, the field requires working through practices that sit beyond conventional academic settings. Her work brings artists and lawyers into collaboration to conduct “research by creating objects,” rather than relying solely on doctrinal analysis. She presents Law and the Humanities as a meeting point for different methods, where critical legal and political theory intersect with “material understandings of the world,” enabling justice to be explored and expressed through artistic practice.

Navigating such an open landscape, however, also requires a distinct kind of agility – a willingness to step beyond the comfort of established legal vocabularies. For researchers like Dr. Patchett, this means developing new methodological tools to navigate (as well as embrace) the “messiness” of interdisciplinary work, without sacrificing rigour. She describes her use of speculative fiction to reimagine borders as the lived experience of exclusion, a method that makes visible what doctrinal approaches often obscure. As she notes, “there’s a sort of resistance sometimes to go beyond the doctrinal,” but the friction is what enables the work to happen. Law’s a Drag similarly leans into performance as a mode of inquiry, disrupting traditional academic spaces – sometimes by “turning up in drag doing a play for 15 minutes” – to better understand how law is experienced by marginalised communities. As he notes, the work is a process of “discovering new landscapes as we go.”

Mapping the Field and Visualising the “Unknown Unknowns”

A central challenge for the field is making this dispersed work visible. The map intervenes by cutting through institutional fragmentation, bringing into view links that might otherwise remain obscured simply because no one has the time or resources to uncover them on an individual basis. As Dr. Patchett observes, “even within my own institution, I’ve only recently found people researching the same sort of area,” underscoring how difficult it can be to understand the wider while navigating teaching and administrative demands. Dr. Greenwood-Reeves echoes this experience, noting that without a shared reference point, potential collaborators can remain invisible – even when they are “right on my doorstep.”

This gap in visibility shapes how researchers understand the field itself. “Ultimately, you only know what you know,” says Dr. Greenwood-Reeves. “There are lots of unknown unknowns in terms of our organisations and institutions that exist that could be doing work which is complementary… or something very contrasting.”

Mapping, then, helps us clarify the state of the field: it shows who is involved and where new links can be made. Functioning as both a directory that helps researchers and collectives find one another and a tool that reveals hidden connections, the map brings coherence to a disperse domain and its niche clusters. For Dr. Finchett-Maddock, partly the value lies in the map’s geographical grounding – the ability to locate political networks and hubs locally, discovering “where things are happening” beyond one’s immediate circle.

For Dr. Patchett, the map could offer a new way of thinking, arguing that the purpose of visualisation is “in itself a kind of way of thinking critically about some of the issues you’re engaging with.” She points to the significance of attending to the “least associated tags,” the gaps in the data that indicate where research activity might be thin, pointing to areas that could be developed further.

Clarifying how the field is organised, where work is taking place (and where it isn’t) is vital for the next generation of scholars. For early-career researchers, especially in interdisciplinary spaces, understanding where to begin can also be difficult. Dr. Patchett recalls her own experience completing a PhD in Germany, where she often felt “on the edges” of disciplines – attending law conferences or literature conferences but never quite finding a home in either. “It took me a long time to embrace a kind of interdisciplinarity,” she admits, noting that the process of finding one’s tribe was often slow and opaque. Dr. Greenwood-Reeves acknowledges that navigating academia often relies on luck – having a mentor or friend “on the inside” to demystify the landscape. Without those personal connections, scholars can easily remain on the periphery, unaware of the networks and resources that could transform their research.

With access to an overview of Law and the Humanities, “There’s room for [Early Career Researchers] to have more of a connection through this map… to find out the interrelations,” Dr. Patchett notes. It allows young scholars to situate their own work within the broader field early on, helping them “start to think of where you might fit in.”

Broadening the Horizon: Cross-Sector and Global Connections

While the map provides a crucial starting point, the conversation highlighted the urgent need to broaden the dataset beyond the university walls. Dr. Finchett-Maddock emphasises the importance of cross-sector networks, urging scholars to map relationships with galleries, advocacy groups, and third-sector organisations. By identifying cultural hubs that act as points of exchange between different communities and grassroot organisations, researchers as well as practitioners can find colleagues for workshops outside traditional academic hierarchies, opening space for perspectives that are often absent from university settings.

There is also a pressing need to look further afield.  Dr. Greenwood-Reeves argues that the next step must be an accelerated internationalisation meaning a greater representation of institutions and practices beyond the UK. There should be a “horizontal distribution of information, opportunities, power, and resources” that can help the discipline “break free of the kind of centre of gravity of the North.” By visualising the already existing global connections, we can strengthen existing representation and imagine new avenues for collaboration. In doing so, the field can move toward a more equitable exchange of ideas, ensuring that Law and the Humanities does not remain an insulated conversation.

More than a Business Case

The drive to map Law and the Humanities goes beyond efficiency or funding. At its core, the project is about building community, resilience, and expanding capacity, creating the conditions in which people working across Law and the Humanities can meet and collaborate. As Dr. Greenwood-Reeves concludes, “the more opportunity that’s available to make those connections doesn’t just have a good business case, it’s also part of our flourishing as people.” In a field that deals with human experience and the social conditions that shape it, giving practitioners access to the networks that make intellectual work possible is a prerequisite for meaningful, inclusive scholarship. 

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