This year, HLGC are delighted to be welcoming Professor Caroline Humfress (St Andrews; Michigan) and Professor Emanuele Conte (Roma Tre; Paris EHESS) for a conversation about legal pluralism in the Middle Ages, chaired by our colleague Dr Andrew Cecchinato.
Caroline Humfress is Professor of Medieval History at the University of St Andrews and the L. Bates Lea Global Professor at the University of Michigan. She is also the Co-Director of the Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research and the Founding and Current Convenor of the MLitt in Legal and Constitutional Studies at St Andrews. She has published widely on Ancient, Late Antique and Early Medieval law and religion, placing historical questions in dialogue with legal, anthropological and sociological concepts and approaches. Most recently she has edited The Cambridge Comparative History of Ancient Law (Cambridge University Press, 2024): the first project of its kind in the field of comparative ancient legal history, working with an international team of experts across the fields of Ancient Greek, Roman, Indo-European, Near-Eastern and Chinese law. She has just published an article titled “Legal Pluralism’s Other: Mythologising Modern Law” for the Law and History Review (2023) – a fascinating article, if you fancy a read.
Emanuele Conte is Professor of Legal History at the University of Roma Tre and Directeur d’Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has been a visiting professor at the University of St Andrews, the Max Planck Institute in Frankfut am Main, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, University of California Berkeley, Wolfson College Oxford, and a truly impressive array of universities in France. Professor Conte has published widely on medieval law and legal theory, including seven books and several dozens of articles in Italian, French, English, German and Spanish, and is the editor of a volume of the series Cultural History of Law (Bloomsbury, 2019). He has recently published an article titled “Legal Pluralism from History to Theory and Back: Otto von Gierke, Santi Romano, and Francesco Calasso on Medieval Institutions”, also for the Law and History Review (2023) – and also very deserving of a read.
Prompted by their recent work in legal pluralism, we have invited Professors Humfress and Conte to discuss the topic through a series of questions.
This promises to be a lively and illuminating evening with wide appeal for those interested in legal theory, legal pluralism, medieval history, and everything in between.
All are welcome to attend.