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LCIL International Law Centre PodcastEvents from the Cambridge LCIL Author: LCIL, University of Cambridge
The Lauterpacht Centre for International Law is the scholarly home of International law at the University of Cambridge. The Centre, founded by Sir Elihu Lauterpacht QC in 1983, serves as a forum for the discussion and development of international law and is one of the specialist law centres of the Faculty of Law. The Centre holds weekly lectures on topical issues of international law by leading practitioners and academics. For more information see the LCIL website at http://www.lcil.cam.ac.uk/ Language: en Genres: Education, News, Politics Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Reading International Law as Stories
Tuesday, 24 February, 2026
Speaker: Prof Tamsin Paige, Deakin Law SchoolLecture summary: Stories serve an integral role in society as, among other things, a meaning making tool. As a method of meaning making, stories are relational and allow the storyteller to assist their audience in understanding ideas, concepts, and experiences that lie beyond their lived experiences. Using this understanding and starting point, I ask what happens if we read international law as an iterative archive of stories about global society? I will start by exploring the meaning making function that storytelling serves in society, and then consider how international law, be it treaties, custom, case law or other legal instruments, can be read as official stories of the society that produced them.Tamsin Phillipa Paige is an Associate Professor with Deakin Law School. Her work is interdisciplinary in nature, using qualitative sociological methods to analyse international law (with a focus on application of law and the impact it has on society). She also does law and literature research using popular fiction to understand social perceptions of the law. Her work has examined (among other things) Somali piracy, UN Security Council decision making, the impact of international law on queer lives, and conflict based sexual violence. In a former life, she was a French trained, fine dining pâtissière.Chair: Dr Lena Holzer, Centre FellowThis lecture was delivered on 20 February 2026 and is part of the Friday Lunchtime Lecture series.
