LSAANZ Conference: Rights, Relationality, Resilience, Reciprocity

Te Kaupeka Ture I The Faculty of Law at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha I The University of Canterbury will host the 2025 Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand Conference: Rights, Relationality, Resilience, Reciprocity.

About the project

Sociolegal studies provide important tools to investigate our most pressing social and legal problems, including environmental harm, inequality and injustice, and climate change. The Faculty of Law at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha I The University of Canterbury will host the 2025 Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand (LSAANZ) Conference: Rights, Relationality, Resilience, Reciprocity.

With the Borrin Foundation’s support, the Conference will bring together international and local legal scholars and experts to engage in diverse conversations about sociolegal studies. The Conference will explore how understandings of rights and responsibilities are evolving in response to legal and social change; and how we can reimagine our socio-legal relationships in ways that foster resilience and better reflect our reciprocal relationships with each other and the world we live in.

The Conference will bring together law and society scholars, legal practitioners, policymakers, and community leaders to engage in thought-provoking and reflective conversations on key areas of sociolegal studies related to Rights, Relationality, Resilience, Reciprocity. The Conference will include keynote speeches and dedicated research streams on environmental, Indigenous, and feminist/gender studies, explored through multiple worldviews and positionalities, with a strong emphasis on Indigenous and Pacific knowledge.

Grant amount

$20,947.83 for the Conference in 2025.

About LSAANZ & the conference organisers

The 2025 LSAANZ Conference is being hosted by Te Kaupeka Ture I The Faculty of Law at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha I The University of Canterbury. The Faculty of Law is one of New Zealand’s leading law schools. We have a strong reputation in traditional areas of law and offer innovative courses. We combine academic rigour with the development of essential legal skills.

Since its establishment in the 1990s, LSAANZ has been dedicated to fostering the study of law and society in Australia and New Zealand. Through conferences, the Association has provided a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue, bringing together researchers, academics, practitioners, and social leaders to address critical sociolegal issues.

The conference co-organisers are:

Dr Elizabeth Macpherson, a Professor of Law and Rutherford Discovery Fellow at the University of Canterbury, specialising in environmental and natural resources law. She is the author of the award-winning book Indigenous Water Rights in Law and Regulation: Lessons from Comparative Experience (2019, Cambridge University Press) and leads the Rutherford Discovery Fellowship programme (Te Āparangi I The Royal Society) Blue Carbon Futures in Aotearoa New Zealand: Law, Climate, Resilience.
Dr Mark Hanna is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of Canterbury. His work focuses on defamation law and rights to free speech, reputation, open justice and access to justice. His current research is focused on SLAPPs (strategic litigation against public participation), and he is the Director of the SLAPPs Research Group, a network of scholars from around the world who are engaged in research on SLAPPs and anti-SLAPPs reform.

The Conference co-organisers are supported by an organising committee from the University of Canterbury, including Professor Natalie Baird, Dr Marozane Spamers, Professor Annick Masselot, Dr Cassandra Mudgway, Associate Professor Toni Collins, Professor John Hopkins, Dr Sascha Mueller, Kathleen Stringer, Dee Tawhai, Ariana Johannsen, Joeana Togiaso, and Maria Victoria Enriquez Martinez.