Edinburgh Law School welcomes Professor Lauren Benton as its first Dean’s Fellow
Mon 25 March 2024
On Monday, 11 March 2024, Edinburgh Law School was delighted to welcome Professor Lauren Benton as its first Dean’s Fellow. Professor Benton is the Barton M. Biggs Professor of History and Professor of Law at Yale University; she is a world-renowned historian of law and empire.
Professor Benton spent a week at Edinburgh Law School (11 March - 15 March) engaging in various events and discussions of her research with the Law School’s academic and student community. She also hosted a seminar for doctoral researchers on the role of methods and sources in legal history writing, focused on thinking about ‘legal’ and ‘historical’ methodologies and how they intersect in the study of legal history.
On Wednesday, 13 March, Professor Benton gave the inaugural Dean’s Lecture, ‘Law and Imperial Violence’. Open to the larger University of Edinburgh community and beyond, the lecture attracted a ‘full house’ in our Usha Kasera lecture theatre. Her stimulating talk drew on many of the themes explored in her new book ‘They Called it Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence’, published by Princeton University Press.
During her time at Edinburgh Law School, Professor Benton also recorded a podcast episode. In conversation with Professor Neil Walker and Dr Michelle Burgis-Kasthala, Professor Benton went into further detail about her latest book project and how it fitted into her overall body of work over three decades.
We want to thank Professor Lauren Benton for sharing her knowledge and expertise with the Edinburgh Law School community. It was an honour to have her as our first Dean’s Fellow, and we are grateful to have spent time learning from her and with her during her fellowship.