Virtual Working Groups, 2025-2026

Last spring the ASLH announced a new initiative: virtual thematic legal history working groups. We are happy to announce three such groups, and to invite members to apply to participate in them. The organizers of each group will coordinate admission, and their contact information can be found both below and on the longer version of the CFAs (links below). If you are interested or have further questions, please feel free to reach out to the organizers.

Consent: A Global Legal History (Bianca Premo & Adriana Chira)

This reading group will gather to discuss the global history of consent. Its focus is on historicizing liberal notions of consent and understanding other regimes of assent and refusal in the past. We encourage applications from all scholars, including graduate students, early career scholars, and internationally based scholars. Participants’ expertise might reside in a range of periods, regions, and legal historical subfields, including, but not limited to, the histories of sex; marriage; medicine; healing and the body; crime and punishment; religious conversion; and political participation. (Deadline for applications: August 22)

Environment, History, and Law Global Workshop Series (Susan Bartie and David Schorr)

The triangle ‘environment – history – law’ suggests a wealth of opportunities for productive transdisciplinary scholarship: Historical analysis of environmental law, environmental histories of legal change, legal histories of the environment, etc. The workshop will meet approximately every 6 weeks, with a short hiatus from June to August. The workshops will be held online at different times to accommodate a range of time zones. At the workshop we will discuss pre-circulated draft papers. An expert in the area is invited to begin the discussion, followed by general comments and questions from all participants.

Roundtable on Radical Legal Advocacy (Marie-Amélie George and Dan Farbman)

We are gathering a group of historians, legal scholars, and practitioners to participate in an iterative process of discussion, collaboration, and research on the topic of the history of radical legal advocacy. The ultimate goal of these meetings is some form of collective/collected writing–likely a book, although possibly a special journal issue. We hope to draw in participants who have worked or are interested in working on the subject of legal advocacy in relation to social movements and radical politics across time periods, geography, and subject matter. Although radical politics is generally associated with the political left, we encourage those studying the right to join the conversation. (Deadline for applications: August 22)