Calls for Expressions of Interest
We are seeking academic contributors to a proposed edited collection, provisionally entitled Northern/Irish Feminist Constitutions Texts and Provocations. The collection is the key planned output of a feminist constitution-writing project. Feminist judgments projects are now a familiar critical legal method. They use rewritten court judgments to explore the possibilities of feminist law-making. However, feminist judgments projects cannot remake the law they are working with; they can only interpret and apply it in new ways. A feminist constitution-writing project will write new constitutional texts from scratch, allowing us to explore constraints on feminist law-making in new and challenging ways. This project will draft recognisable constitutional texts that enact feminist approaches to law. Some elements of the texts we produce will be inspired by feminist legal interventions in other jurisdictions, but others will be more speculative and experimental.
Submissions to: femconfutures@gmail.com
Deadline for Expressions of Interest (750 words maximum): January 16 2023 5pm GMT.
Deadline for First Drafts (2000 – 5000 words): January 16 2024, 5pm GMT
Mainie Jellett (1897-1944)
Academic contributors to the edited collection will be asked to write a chapter or section in two parts; (i) the text of a feminist constitutional provision or provisions and (ii) a written commentary setting the provision in context and explaining how your proposal is inspired by feminist legal thought. Your initial expression of interest (max 750 words) may be either a draft abstract for your proposed chapter, a draft of your proposed constitutional text or a combination of both. The proposed collection is intended to appeal to a range of academic, non-academic, professional, activist and student audiences. In addition to the contributions sought in this call, the collection will include reflections and commentaries from artists, writers, poets and a range of other non-academic participants in the project. All chapters will be peer-reviewed.
Contributors should review our Principles for Feminist Constitution Drafting here
Submissions from postgraduate researchers and early career scholars are especially welcome. Co-authored and interdisciplinary submissions are strongly encouraged, as are co-authored submissions with non-academic authors.
The project is based in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. We welcome proposals seeking to respond to the immediate legal and political context in one or both of these jurisdictions or to their inter-relationship(s). We also welcome proposals that engage with potential constitutional possibilities in those jurisdictions, including imagining feminist outcomes not considered feasible within the current legal and political context. This project includes pre-figurative and utopian as well as critical elements. In other words, we are not only seeking to critique the law in force in the countries where we live; we are seeking to create a space where we can imagine and experiment with potential legal futures.
From 2023-2025, the project directors will be running drafting workshops with a range of non-academic partners. If your proposal is accepted, you will be asked to attend at least two of these workshops. Where a drafting workshop focuses on a topic connected with your proposal, you may be asked to present your proposal at that workshop.
The project aspires to be trans-inclusive, anti-ableist and anti-racist in its approach, and the directors will not accept proposals likely to undermine that commitment.