Identity Deception: A Critical History
The project, ‘Identity Deception: A Critical History,’ asks when, if ever, it is appropriate to punish a person who engages in identity deception (pretending to be someone they are not).
Focussing in particular on intimate deceptions (deceiving another in order to induce intimacy, e.g., in the form of a romantic relationship, sexual encounter or marriage), the project looks at how the use of deception has been treated as a wrong that merits a legal response across the modern era (c. 1750 to the present).
The project examines civil and criminal responses to this conduct and focusses on identifying punitive and quasi-punitive responses across both spheres. It aims to construct a genealogy of the challenges that currently exist in debates about whether and how the law ought to respond to deceptively induced intimacy, including whether it is appropriate for the state to intervene, what kind of legal response is fitting, which kinds of deceptions ought to trigger a response and what kind of conduct should be considered ‘deceptive’.
The project aims to show how these challenges can only be fully understood, and therefore confronted, when situated against shifts in legal and popular understandings of intimacy, such as the cleaving apart of sex and marriage (and indeed romantic relationships more generally), the changing role of intimate relationships in self-construction, and the implications these changes have for expectations of interpersonal honesty and ‘authenticity'.
The project aims to transform and enrichen debates about how to conceptualise identity deception and how and when law ought to sanction this kind of conduct. This is not merely an academic exercise, however; these deliberations have important practical consequences for how law pursues justice. The project, therefore, aims to help shape how, and against whom, the law is applied in practice.
‘Identity Deception: A Critical History’ has been awarded funding as part of the AHRC Research Leadership Fellows scheme and led by Dr Chloë Kennedy.
Image credit: Jamie Crewe, “False Wife” (2022) [video still].jpg
Dr Chloë Kennedy, Senior Lecturer in Criminal Law
Dr Kelly Ann Couzens, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Jamie Crewe, Artist
The Identity Deception project involves a creative strand, whose aim is not to create a direct illustration of the research and its outputs but, rather, to invite independent explorations of the topic and wider themes – such as selfhood, deception, and trust – and to think critically about some of the ways that law constructs and values identity and intimacy.
As part of this strand, the project is working closely with the University of Edinburgh Art Collection and has commissioned the award-winning artist Jamie Crewe.
Learn more about Jamie Crewe’s art
Learn more about the University of Edinburgh Art Collections
'False Wife' by Jamie Crewe released on 08 April 2022 View details
'False Wife' by Jamie Crewe wins European Media Art Festival (EMAF) Award (24 April 2022) View details
EMAF Jury Statement:
"The International Jury presents the 2022 EMAF Award for Outstanding Media Art to False Wife by Jamie Crewe. From the first frame, and first beat, the viewer is unmoored from their seat and catapulted from the computer screen on your lap, to the dark corner of a club, to a brief respite in a meadow, and back again to your rigid cinema seat.
Given a 10 second countdown each time to prepare, in the vein of a poppers training video we melt together, enraptured, entangled by a folkloric shapeshifter, and nothing is the same again. Our skin, our identity peels away with each encounter completing the haptic onslaught started with ribcage rattling bass.
This is a work that inventively combines layers of manipulated images, sound and text imprinting them directly onto you at a breakneck speed. False Wife oscillates our boundaries between the individual and the collective, the body and the mind, the fixity of gender and the social contract of cinema."
Speaking engagements
Cheating death? Upload, sexual consent, and the criminal law
Online, hosted by Gikii and the Legal Institute of the University of Iceland (6-7 July 2022) View event
CLRNN 3: Consent and Deception Project - Consultation Launch
Online, hosted by the Criminal Law Reform Now Network (CLRNN) (08 December 2021) View event
Rediscovering Feminist Histories
Online, Being Human: A Festival of the Humanities (18 November 2021) View event
Criminalizing Deceptive Sex
Online, hosted by the Crimsoc, Lawyers without Borders and Women in Law (29 October 2021)
Inducing Intimacy: Deception, Consent and Law
Online, hosted by the Oxford Jurisprudence Discussion Group, Oxford University (13 May 2021) View event
Personal Lives and Public Laws: Intimacy, Deception and the State
Online, hosted by the Virtual Workshop on the Political Turn(s) in Criminal Law Thinking (7 May 2021) View event
Inducing Intimacy: A History of Transforming Wrongs
Online, hosted by the Criminal Law Discussion Group, University of Oxford (8 March 2021) View event
Inducing Intimacy: critical lessons from law and history
Online, hosted by Cardiff University (10 February 2021) View event
Trust and Identity Network Sex Seminars - 'Sex, Marriage, Trust and Identity: A Brief History of Transforming Wrongs'
Online, (27 November 2020) View event
Law School Staff Seminar Series - 'Sexual Wrongs and Civil Laws: A Brief History of Seduction'
Online, Hosted by Edinburgh Law School (25 November 2020) View event
Lying and identity
Online, hosted by Lancaster University (9 June 2020) View event
The Dark Girl Dressed in Blue: Counterfeit Cash and Criminal Law in 19th C Scotland
Online, hosted by Oxford Legal History Forum (18 February 2020) View event
Bracton Centre for Legal History Research Summer Symposium 2020
Online, hosted by University of Exeter (3 July 2020) View event
Criminalising Deceptive Sex
Online, hosted by Lindsay Farmer, Antony Duff, Sandra Marshall (14 May 2020) View event
Identity Deception: A Critical History
Online, hosted by British Academy (18 May 2020) View event
Workshop on Consent
University of Surrey (16 September 2019) View event
Ethics seminar series
(9 October 2019) View event
Criminalising Deceptive Sex: Sex, Identity and Recognition
University of Warwick (22 November 2019) View event
Events Organised
Modern Histories of Consent, Intimacy and Law (17-18 June 2021)
Identity and Criminal Responsibility in Comparative Historical Perspective: A Roundtable
American Society for Legal History Annual Meeting (Postponed to 2021) View event
Trust and Identity Network Sex Seminars (Organiser)
Online, (20 - 27 November 2020) View events
Identity workshop
Online, hosted by British Academy (18 May 2020) View event
Books
Inducing Intimacy: Consent, Deception and the Law
(in progress, under contract with Cambridge University Press)
Policy Paper
Sex, Selfhood and Deception
Kennedy, Chloë. In: CLRNN3: Reforming the Relationship between Sexual Consent, Deception and Mistake - Consultation (December 2021) View consultation paper
Blog posts
A Brief History of Seduction (Dr Chloe Kennedy, History / Sexuality / Law, 29 April 2021)
Sex, Identity and Recognition: Re-thinking ‘Rape by Deception’ (Dr Chloë Kennedy, Inherently Human, 7 February 2019)
Book chapters
Counterfeit currency and the Criminal Law in commercializing Scotland.
Kennedy, Chloë. Stair Miscellany VIII. 2020. View chapter
Journal articles
Criminalising deceptive sex : Sex, identity and recognition.
Kennedy, Chloë. In: Legal Studies, (Published, March 2021). View article
Digital Media
Presentation - Sex, Selfhood and Deception
Kennedy, Chloë. Criminal Law Reform Now Network (CLRNN) 3: Consent and Deception Project - Consultation Launch, 08.12.2021 Watch the presentation
Podcast - Beyond Consent
Kennedy, Chloë. The Age of Consent 03.12.2021. (Spotify) Listen to podcast
Podcast - Deceptive Sex
Kennedy, Chloë. Talking Research, 20.01.2021. (Spotify) Listen to podcast
Artwork - False Wife
Jamie Crewe, 08 April 2022 View artwork
News items
- New work by artist Jamie Crewe to be launched as part of Dr Chloë Kennedy’s project on Intimacy and Deception (Edinburgh Law School News, Fri 8 April 2022)
- Commissioning Art at the University: Identity Deception Research Commission (Edinburgh College of Art News, 10 December 2020)
- New paper proposes framework for criminalising deceptive sex (Scottish Legal News, 10 November 2020)
- Identity Deception project commissions artist Jamie Crewe (Edinburgh Law School News, 13 July 2020)
- Edinburgh University lecturer Chloë Kennedy awarded funding for identity deception research (Scottish Legal News, 16 August 2019)