Law Research Festival

10.00 

Opening and pitches (Lenculenhal)
- Kasper Dziurdz
- Iris Xu
- Guotong Shen
- Maarten Stremler
- Shashank Chakravarthy

11.00

Session 1: Celebrating academic failures (Statenzaal)
- Gijs van Dijck
- Jan Smits
- Ellen Vos
- Moderator: David Roef

In academia, we tend to be silent about failures and non-successes. In this session, we aim to break this silence and reflect on failures, learning from them, and even celebrate them. The session hosts ‘failure experts’ who will share their experience with failure and non-success in academia and discuss the learning these failures provided (or not!).  Participants are invited to join the discussion and share examples of failure, openly or anonymously.

14.00 

Session 2: Academic future imagined: The role of academics in the public debate: on scholactivism and cancel culture (Statenzaal)
- Jan Komárek (University of Copenhagen)
- Mariolina Eliantonio
- Roland Pierik
- Bruno De Witte
- Moderator: Monica Claes

‘Scholactivism’ has recently generated a heated debate in the legal academic community. It refers to academics taking an explicitly normative standpoint in their work. Many academics advocate for legal principles, rights, obligations or regulatory changes. Questions have been raised about scholactivism and the evolving perception of the academic role and the ‘scientific’ rigour. Some highlight the need for critical distance from the object of research. Others stress the need to leave ivory towers and seek positive social impact. In this panel, we have invited our speakers to reflect on these challenging questions and share their experience.