PhD Seminar
Thursday 31 March 2016
12.30pm–1.30pm

Seminar Room 1.13, Coombs Extension Building (8), Fellows Road, ANU

About the Speaker

Shane Chalmers studied law and international studies as an undergraduate at the University of Adelaide between 2004 and 2010. In 2011, Shane moved to Montreal to undertake a Master of Laws in comparative law and cross-cultural jurisprudence at McGill University, culminating in a critical theoretical reflection on the work of human rights internationally. Inspired by his time at McGill, Shane began his PhD at the ANU at RegNet’s Centre for International Governance and Justice in 2012.

By asking the question, what takes place in the rule of law?, and more specifically, what is taking place in the rule of law in Liberia?, that the thesis undertakes a study of the life of law’s rule in a country that is on the frontline of the global spread of powerful ideologies. With Theodor Adorno’s negative-dialectical philosophy as intellectual guide, and based on fieldwork carried out in Liberia and the United States, the thesis examines how these ideologies—above all capitalism—inform the rule of law, and how the rule of law provides a medium for them to take place.
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