Just Methods: Communities of Practice in Law and Society Research

Author: Jennifer Balint; Annie Bunting; Heather Tasker; Franka Vaughan; Margot Young
Publisher: Hart Publishing
ISBN: 9781509991556
Published In: October 2026
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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In this book, law and society researchers reflect on past, new, and emerging participatory action research (PAR).

In particular, the book explores two key dimensions of community-engaged law and society research: the process, methods, and challenges of collaborative research on justice, and innovative dissemination techniques of co-created knowledge, including theatre, art, museum exhibits, walking tours, music, and web platforms. The book highlights different strengths and features of PAR research, with chapters that cover a wide range of locales.

More specifically, the chapters explore the following key questions:

How does knowledge-building about the meanings and mechanisms of justice emerge and form within law and society scholarship?
How can we, as researchers, build space for public conversations about justice?
How do colonialism, sexism and racism impact these conversations?
What do meaningful partnership and collaboration look like in law and society, and how does this work take shape, recognizing these structures of inequality?
How can we better, with more impact, share research with/in communities, and what opportunities are there for knowledge sharing to create space for conversations about justice?

The book delves into research projects and innovative methods that do novel work in charting out new methods and, consequently, builds new knowledge in socio-legal justice scholarship. It speaks to diverse range of researchers, research subjects, and research priorities.

Introduction: Just Methods: Communities of Practise, Social Justice and Care, Jennifer Balint (University of Melbourne, Australia.), Annie Bunting (York University, Canada), Heather Tasker (Dalhousie University, Canada), Franka Vaughan (University of Melbourne, Australia), and Margot Young (University of British Columbia, Canada)

Part 1: Justice, Healing and Mobilisation

1. Ingoma as a Healing Methodology in Agitating for Redress, Thiyane Duda (University of Cape Town, South Africa), Ncedo Mngqibisa (University of Cape Town, South Africa) and Sindiso Mnisi Weeks (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA)

2. Sites of Conscience: Time and Place for Disability Socio-Legal Research, Linda Steele and Phillippa Carnemolla (University of Technology Sydney, Australia)

3. Mobilising 'Difficult Knowledge' and Difficult Knowledge Mobilisation, Annie Bunting (York University, Canada)

4. Towards a Community-Engaged Methodology of Justice: What Counts as Justice, Jennifer Balint (University of Melbourne, Australia)

Part 2: Reflexive Practice, Reflexive Justice

5. Building Just Societies: Reflections and Strategies for Effective Community-Engaged Anti-Racism Research in Australia, Franka Vaughan (University of Melbourne, Australia) and Aish Ravi (Monash University, Australia)

6. Navigating Ethical Challenges in Research on Gendered Violence in African Contexts: A Reflective Conversation, Allen Kiconco (University of Witwatersrand, South Africa) with Heather Tasker (Dalhousie University, Canada)

7. Centering Relationships within Justice-Oriented Collaborations: Holding Open the Transformative Potential of the Third Space, Nesam McMillan and Nicholas Hill (University of Melbourne, Australia)

8. Our Institutions are our Mirrors: Reflections on the Ethics of Community-Engaged Research in a 'Risky' Town in Northern Shan State, Myanmar, Bethia Burgess (University of Melbourne, Australia)

Part 3: Decolonising Methods and Methods for Decolonisation

9. Ecosystemic Intersectionality: A method of Intergenerational, Social, Environmental, and Indigenous Justice for Girls, Zoe Craig-Sparrow (Justice for Girls/University of London, UK), Annabel Webb (Justice for Girls, Canada) and Margot Young (Justice for Girls/University of British Columbia, Canada)

10. An Indigenous Ecological Jurisprudence: Eco-legal Participatory Methodologies and the University Initiative of the Inga People in the Andes-Amazon, Colombia, Ivan Vargas Roncancio (York University, Canada)

11. Documenting the Situation of Former Child Soldiers with Smartphones: Lessons Learned from a Participatory Research Project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Appolinaire Lipandasi and Sylvie Bodineau, (Independent Researchers, DR Congo/France)

Part 4: Disrupting Justice

12. Beyond the Binary: Gender, Civil Society, and Ethical Participatory Action Research on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, Chika Maduakolam (York University, Canada)

13. Transforming Business and Human Rights from the 'Bottom Up': Pluralising Justice Concepts and Means of Addressing Corporate Wrongs through Transnational Participatory Law Scholarship, Franziska Wohltmann (FAU Nurnberg-Erlangen, Germany

14. Filtering Justice: Pre-trial Matters in Prosecutor v. Dominic Ongwen at the International Criminal Court, Ijeamaka Anika (University of British Columbia, Canada)

15. Reflections of Conducting Research to Support Victims' Justice Search: Lessons Learned from Post-Conflict Northern Uganda, Teddy Atim (York University, Canada)

16. Afterword, Sylvia Bawa (York University, Canada)