Course
Law & Empirics session - Introducing Participatory Socio-Legal Action Research
- Date
- Monday 9 November 2026
- Time
- Address
-
Kamerlingh Onnes Gebouw
Steenschuur 25
2311 ES Leiden - Room
- B.026
Participatory Action Research (PAR) is an approach to scholarly investigation that involves the populations experiencing social and legal injustice—especially oppressed and marginalized grassroots communities—as collaborators in research. It aims to co-produce knowledge with these groups to empower them in their struggles for change. Explicitly oriented toward social justice, PAR offers an approach whose results can be immediately adopted and acted upon.
Although well developed in other fields, PAR methods are only recently being adopted by (socio-)legal researchers, and the approach raises numerous challenges. In contrast to traditional legal research, PAR aims to de-center the authority of academic researchers, often producing complex dynamics of power and responsibility. Its methods and outputs also often diverge from traditional forms of scholarship, which can be challenging for academic researchers to navigate.
This Law and Empirics Session will introduce the methods, strategies, and tensions involved in developing PAR-driven research. Participants will also be invited to reflect on practical ways to incorporate PAR into their own legal research projects.
Registration
Please register by sending an email to empirics@law.leidenuniv.nl before 2 November 2026.
