HURIME Project
Human Rights in the Post-Uprisings Middle East: Emerging Discourses and Practices in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco
The popular Arab Spring uprisings in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region and their recent developments have proved the significant emancipatory potential of human rights and moved the human rights issue to the forefront of academic and political debates. This project deals with the human rights discourses and practices in the MENA region undergoing transition through the course of so-called Arab Spring by conducting a comparative analysis of two key countries; namely Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.
Read more about the HURIME Project
Age of consent and child-marriage in the British Empire
This interdisciplinary project aims to explore the debates that led to the reform of age of consent laws in UK and their introduction in other parts of the Empire at the end of the 19th Century. Intertwined within these debates are notions of gender, women’s rights, biology, and attempts to understand the ‘native’ psyche. These compete with tropes of cultural relativism, orientalism, the female victim, and the white (wo)man’s burden amongst other concerns. Read more...
Thai Rule of Law Project
This project is concerned with the application of the ‘rule of law’ to Thailand[1] and it seeks to engage academically with rule of law issues at a crucial time. The recent trend towards democratic constitutionalism has been interrupted by absolute rule and the protection of human rights under the law has been suspended. Viewed from a historical standpoint the concept of rule of law might refer simply to the emergence of the idea of limited government. Read more...
Sanitation in India: Understanding a complex and controversial human right (2016)
This International Academic Fellowship of the Leverhulme Trust analysed the right to sanitation in India. Sanitation is a crucial challenge in India where hundreds of millions of people still practise open defecation and where inadequate sanitation is directly linked to the prevalence of waterborne diseases. There has been a sea change in attitudes towards sanitation throughout society and government in recent years. Despite this increased awareness, there is little research concerning the right to sanitation and the legal framework necessary to realise it. Read more...
Law, Human Rights and Peace Building in the Middle East
The Sir Joseph Hotung Programme for Law, Human Rights and Peace Building in the Middle East works to highlight and promote the use of international law and human rights in respect to the engagement of all parties, including third States, to Israeli-Palestinian relations. The goal is to generate policy-oriented scholarship that will support the development of practical strategies for a just and lasting peace in the region. Read more...
Other Projects
Comparative Family Law
An examination of issues in Chinese family law arising out of domestic demographic, economic and ideological pressures for change, as well as globalisation.
Recently published outcomes include:
Michael Palmer, 'China’, in Elaine Sutherland (ed), The Future of Family and Child Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 112-43.
Michael Palmer, ‘Domestic Violence and Mediation in Contemporary China,’ in Michael Palmer and Fu Hualing (eds), Mediation in Contemporary China: Continuity and Change (London: Wildy Simmonds and Hill, 2017).
In progress:
China’s relaxation of the single-child family ideal and its impact on gender equality.
Domestic violence prevention and treatment.
Comparative Education
Explorations in efforts to reform education, including legal education, in East Asia.
Recently published outcomes include:
Published outcomes include: Michael Palmer, 'Some Personal Reflections on Legal Development and Legal Education in China today', in Kuniko Tanaka (ed) Education in Asian Societies (Milan: Biblioteca Ambrosiana, 2014).
In progress:
T Bodenhorn, JP Burns and Michael Palmer (eds), Change, Contradiction and the State: Higher Education in Greater China.
Issues of autonomy and control in China’s universities.