Professor Kimberley Brayson

I joined Leicester law School in 2020 and prior to that was Senior Lecturer in Law and Co-Director of the Sussex Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Sussex. I completed my Ph.D on a full scholarship at the Department of Law Queen Mary University of London (2014). I earned a bilingual (French/English) Masters in Legal Theory from the European Academy of Legal Theory Brussels (magna cum laude) with a semester spent at the European University Institute Florence Italy (2006). I completed my undergraduate degree in English Law and German Law at the University of Kent with a year spent at the Phillips Universität Marburg Germany on the ERASMUS exchange programme (2005).

I was a Lawyer-Linguist (English/French) and Legal Consultant (German) for the European Union working at the College of Europe Bruges Belgium (2007-2008). I won a funded EU Research Fellowship on the international comparative project JURISTRAS (2008-2009). 

My research areas include: feminist legal theories legal theory philosophy of law jurisprudence critical jurisprudence critical theory comparative law law and literature decolonisation and decolonial theory race and gender socio-economic class human rights property Islamic dress alternative pedagogies epistemological pluralism embodied epistemologies

My research is interdisciplinary multidisciplinary and multilingual in nature. I draw on diverse theoretical approaches to interrogate complex legal/material realities. I am currently working on:

A monograph entitled Law and Islamic Dress: Rights and Fascism in Europe (Hart Human Rights Law in Perspective)

A number of other papers and projects including:

• ‘Miscarriage in Law’

• ‘How like a rose? Law through a fractal lens tentatively’

• A second monograph The Chaos of (In)Justice: Towards a Fractal Jurisprudence

• The Literary Law Project In 2021 I completed editing a Special Issue of the Journal of Gender Studies: Islamophobia Islamic Dress and Precarious Bodies

• I sit on the Editorial Board of Feminist Legal Studies

• I sit on the Editorial Board of the interdisciplinary Journal of Gender Studies.

‘Generating Comparison-in-law: Embodied Epistemologies For the Love of Knowledge’ Critical Analysis in Law Special Issue Philosophies of Comparative Law, Luca Siliquini-Cinelli Jaako Husa (eds) (forthcoming Fall 2021)

‘Islamophobia, Islamic dress and precarious bodies’ (2021) Journal of Gender Studies Vol 30:2 129-135

‘Swimming pools, Islamic dress and colonial differentiation: the cleansing role of law in the ‘republic [that] lives through an uncovered face’ (2021) Journal of Gender Studies Vol 30:2 237-252

Special Issue Guest Editor, ‘Islamophobia, Islamic Dress and Precarious Bodies’, (2021) Journal of Gender Studies Special Issue Vol 30:2 (Interdisciplinary journal. Nine international contributions)

Coronavirus reflections: Face masks, Islamic dress and colonial differentiation, Sociology Lens Blog, May 2020

‘Positivism and the Peace/Power Dialectic: Feminist Reflections in a Transnational Age.’ (2019) In Siliquini-Cinelli, Luca (ed.) Legal Positivism in a Global and Transnational Age (Springer Law and Philosophy), 215-252: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030247041

Of Bodies and Burkinis: Institutional Islamophobia, Islamic Dress and the Colonial Condition Sociology Lens Blog August 2019

'Of Bodies and Burkinis: Institutional Islamophobia, Islamic Dress and the Colonial Condition', (2019) Journal of Law and Society 46:1 55-82 : https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jols.12142

‘[Review] Catharine A. MacKinnon (2017) Butterfly Politics’ (2018) Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 31 (6). pp. 567-570. ISSN 0955-7571

‘Securing the future of the European Court of Human Rights in the face of UK opposition: political compromise and restricted rights’. (2017) International Human Rights Law Review, 6 (1). pp. 53-85. ISSN 2213-1027

I welcome PhD proposals in any of the above research areas and in particular those adopting a theoretical approach to law.

Completed PhD students:

Dr Gizem Guney: The Istanbul Convention: a Radical Feminist Instrument?

Dr Ali Kassem: Coloniality Erasure and the Muslim Hijabi’s Lived Experiences: Lebanon as a case-study.

Current PhD students: J

ill StGeorge: Reinterpreting Contemporary Human Rights Violations through the Lens of Slavery: Examining the Persistence of the Buggery Law in Barbados

Mary-Justine Todd: Exploring the interconnections between domestic violence against women and violence against domesticated animals: An ecofeminist analysis of activism and socio-legal frameworks in Bahrain 

• Analysing Law: Jurisprudence Decolonisation Feminism Critique (UG 1st year core)
• Feminist Perspectives in International Law (PG)

I also carry out collaborative research in pedagogy.

• ‘It’s not something that we think about with regard to curriculum.’ Exploring gender and equality awareness in higher education curriculum and pedagogy’ (with Tamsin Hinton-Smith Rosa Marvell Charlotte Morris) (2021) Gender and Education DOI: 10.1080/09540253.2021.1947472
• ‘Gender back on the agenda in higher education: perspectives of academic staff in a contemporary UK case study’ (with Charlotte Morris Tamsin Hinton-Smith Rosa Marvell) (2021) Journal of Gender Studies DOI: 10.1080/09589236.2021.1952064.
• I am currently writing the 'Feminist Legal Theories' chapter in Gender Sexuality and Law C. Ashford and A. Maine (eds). (Edward Elgar). This chapter includes a decolonial feminist judgment rewriting of Begum v SSHD [2021] UKSC 7 I am contributing the 'Law' 'Rights' 'Equality' and 'Justice' spread to the collection This is not a Feminist Textbook! (Goldsmiths Press)"