The British Academy and Ashoka University are inviting proposals from UK and India-based researchers in the humanities and social sciences wishing to attend an interdisciplinary and capacity-building symposium on the theme of justice and in particular questions at the intersections of formal and lived justice.

Aims
This symposium aims to incentivise and establish international engagement and collaboration between researchers from a broad range of disciplines within the humanities and social sciences, encouraging the exchange of ideas across both disciplinary and national boundaries, and supporting the development of early career research talent in both India and the UK.

Research themes and focus
The symposium will explore the intersections and disjunctions between legal frameworks, political contexts, national narratives, and grounded outcomes affected by plays of power, inequality, material conditions and legacies of inclusion and exclusion. Its aim is to understand how these threads impact access to and the experience of justice by citizens in democratic societies.
The symposium will raise questions about inequalities and access to justice, and will also seek to delve into how different structures and mechanisms of states and other forms of organised and informal power are utilised, for what purposes, and with which effects, in various circumstances. In covering the wider experience of justice, including how states and citizens adapt to changing contexts, the symposium will aim to identify pathways for meaningful delivery of justice.

The symposium format will allow for extensive discussion and debate, with considerable time set aside for this and wider networking opportunities. The purpose will be to develop new understanding and ideas about the tensions between global norms and local attempts to realise justice, and encourage creative thinking as to the innovative language and spaces needed for the creation of a more just society (nationally and internationally), which does not rest exclusively on legal definitions of rights and equality but is also grounded in the lived reality of justice.

The symposium will also aim to enhance the capacity of early career scholars from both the UK and India to publish in peer reviewed journals. Participants will benefit from the mentorship and guidance of the senior scholars attending, and will work with these senior scholars to prepare a set of papers on the theme of justice – which following the symposium could be submitted for publication to a special edition peer-reviewed journal.

Eligibility requirements 

1. For the purpose of this symposium, early career is defined as being within a seven-year period of the award of a doctorate (or equivalent research experience).
2. Participants must be based at higher education or other research institutions in either India or the UK.
3. Participants must have fluency in spoken and written English. The symposium will be conducted in English.
4. Participants must be able to travel on dates and times, and on flights or other modes of transportation chosen by the British Academy and Ashoka University.
5. Attendance is mandatory for the entire symposium.

Application deadline: Wednesday 22 April 2020 at 17.00 (UK time)

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