Senthorun Raj: Queer Judgments Seminar and Law + Emotion HDR/ECR Methods Masterclass

You are invited to meet Dr Sen Raj from Manchester Metropolitan University. Sen will be presenting on his research and delivering a HDR/ECR Methods Masterclass.

This event is hosted by UTS Feminist Legal Research Group and UTS Law Health Justice.

12:00-1:00: Seminar Presentation on Queer Judgments (+ Lunch)

1:00-3:00: HDR/ECR Methods Masterclass on Law and Emotions (+ Afternoon Tea)

Come along to both or one of these events!

About Dr Raj

Dr Senthorun (Sen) Raj is an Associate Professor of Human Rights Law at Manchester Law School. Sen’s academic and advocacy work take an intersectional approach to examining the relationship between emotion, culture, race, gender, sexuality, and law across different jurisdictions. He is the author of Feeling Queer Jurisprudence: Injury, Intimacy, Identity (Routledge, 2020) and The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms: Repairing Law (forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press). He is the co-editor of The Queer Outside in Law: Recognising LGBTIQ People in the United Kingdom (Palgrave, 2020) and Queer Judgments (Counterpress, 2025). He currently serves on the editorial board of Feminist Legal Studies and Palgrave’s Socio-Legal Studies Book Series. Sen is the former chair of Amnesty International UK.

About the Events

12:00-1:00: Seminar Presentation 'Playful Provocations: Queer Judgments as Praxis'

What does it mean to ‘queer’ a legal judgment? Why might we want to do that? How might we queer judgments in ways that are legible to legal systems while being accountable to our communities? In answering these questions, the Queer Judgments Project emerges as a collaborative experiment in legal form and substance, queer friendship and community, and love and justice. Queer judgment writing brings together scholars, activists, creatives, lawyers, and judges to re-imagine and re-create legal cases relating to minoritised, non-normative sexual and gendered communities. Building on critical judgments initiatives like Feminist Judgments: From Theory to Practice, this project plays with legal form and legal norms to shape judgments that prioritise the safety, freedom, and wellbeing of queer and trans people, as well as other minoritised groups. In this seminar, I will discuss the process of critical judgment writing using the example of R v Green (a case infamous for legitimising the ‘homosexual advance defence’ in NSW). While that case has been the subject of much academic and community criticism for excusing lethal violence against gay men and has since been superseded by statutory reform, my re-written judgment draws out the different expressions of fear, anxiety, and disgust in that case to jurisprudentially rethink questions of sexual harm, institutionalised homophobia, and criminal responsibility. The work of critical judgment writing from a ‘queer’ perspective is important for legal academics and practitioners, as well as queer scholars and activists, who are engaging with questions of social justice and are interested in alternative ways of litigating, judging, contesting, reforming and/or dismantling law.

1:00-3:00: HDR/ECR Methods Masterclass on Law and Emotions

This masterclass will focus on the role of emotions in doing critical, socio-legal research. Participants will explore the following questions:

1. Why are emotions relevant to legal scholarship, teaching, practice, and advocacy?
2. How do emotions shape our intellectual concerns, research fields, political agendas, and writing processes?
3. What might be gained if think critically and reflexively with emotions when doing critical, socio-legal research?

This masterclass will be of particular interest to all ECRs and PhDs interested in exploring the politics of their research and feelings that underpin doing critical legal work across a range of legal topics. 

Readings for the Masterclass:

Raj, S. (2023). Legally affective: Mapping the emotional grammar of LGBT rights in law school. Feminist Legal Studies, 31, 191–215. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691... 
Raj, S. (2024). Legal hostilities: Navigating queerness, emotion, and space in asylum law. Crime, Media, Culture, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/174165...