EUTopia CoLeCo Legal History: Collective and Individual Rights in Legal History

  COMPTE-RENDU    >>   Launch Event: Prof. Cristiana BASTOS, "Across Empires: Plantation Labour in the Aftermath of Abolition" (TEAMS, 21 OCT 2022) On October the 21 st , Cristiana Bastos, Professor at the University of Lisbon, presented her research Project called “ Colour of Labour ”, involving thirteen other researchers, in the context of the Launch Event of the EUTopia University Legal History which includes partners from six European Universities (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, CY Paris, Warwick, Pompeu Fabra Barcelona, Ljubljana, and Nova Lisboa). This event brought together professors and students from these universities on Teams and will be available for asynchronous viewing to project partners. Bastos studies how 19th and 20th centuries plantations produced race. If the notion of race has, since the ravages of 20th century authoritarianism, become taboo in Europe, as it is finally recognized not to be a biological reality, it is, however, a centr...

  (image source:  Prof. Bastos )   Prof. Cristiana Bastos (Lisboa, ERC Advanced Grantee) will hold this year's  opening lecture  for the EUTopia Connected Learning Community Legal History:Labour Migration. The topic is "Across empires: plantation labour in the aftermath of abolition". Background reading can be found on Prof. Bastos' project  website , and will be shared at registration. The Connected Learning Community Legal History:Labour Migration brings together the VUB, UPF Barcelona, Ljubljana, Warwick, Nova Lisboa and CY Paris. Five to eight students per institution work together on the common theme of  Labour Migration .  The event will take place on  Friday 21 October at 15:30 Brussels Time . Registration is mandatory with dr.  Elisabeth Bruyère  (Elisabeth dot bruyère at vub dot be).

  Members of the constitutional convention meet to vote on the latest provisions of the draft constitution in Santiago on Saturday 14 May.  The Guardian, 16 May 2022, Photograph: Esteban Félix/AP   My project has investigated how textuality has been crucial in Chile’s development as a nation. Specifically, I have considered the art of poetry as a cross-cultural tool that enabled one of Chile’s Indigenous groups, known as the Mapuche, to assert their autonomy and cultural excellence. My study of three exceptional poets - Juan Paulo Huirimilla Oyarzo, Bernardo Colipán Filgueira and Maribel Mora Curriao – concluded that this genre of literature enables the crucial preservation of Indigenous nations, as well as a re-writing of canonical, whitewashed history. From this arose an exploration of the conflict over Indigenous incorporation into Chilean politics. This has been very limited, until now. A new Chilean constitution has been in the making since the plebiscite o...

Discover our students' output either on this blog, or on the virtual exhibition on  Miro  !  

  [ Gallica BnF Digital Library ]  Analysis by Aron Pandian, Warwick. This document, written in 1805, is the constitution written and enacted by the regime of Jean-Jacques Dessalines in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). The Haitian revolution was an inherently unique rebellion. It marked the only time a slave colony was successfully overthrown by its enslaved captives and Haiti became the first Black republic in the world. Article 14 of the 1805 Constitution, detailing that all citizens be defined as Black, can be observed as a new, radical racialisation of Haitian identity, avoided by even Toussaint Louverture. It was fundamental to the processes of citizenship and state formation in Haiti. This source allows insight into French imperial fears of Haitian blackness, as the previous hegemony of whiteness was deconstructed by the new state. The constitution also suggests how Dessalines sought to consolidate the complex frameworks of creole, free Black ...

  How Belgium’s  Trump-avant-la-lettre  Employed Xenophobia to Win Elections in the Seventies Roger Nols was a French-speaking politician known for his controversial attitude towards the Flemish minority in Brussels, and later on in his career his xenophobic views on immigration. Starting his career as a member of the liberal party, he eventually would co-found a party aimed towards representing the French-speaking majority in Brussels, the Front des Francophones (‘FDF’). Towards the end of his career, Nols main ideological selling points were more and more focused on immigration. He founded the Brussels division of the well-known extreme right-wing Front National (‘FN’), and was a great admirer of its French president Jean-Marie Le Pen.    It was Nols's phlegmatic style that still earns him a place in the minds (but not the hearts) of Brussels’ citizens today. Other, less polarising politicians sometimes get in the habit of bending the rules as well, but Nols h...