Dr Marcelo (Marc) Carvalho Loureiro

I joined Leicester Law School after having worked for the University of Birmingham, and the SOAS University of London where I taught and researched on colonial empires, constitutional rights, and citizenship law. I completed a fully-funded PhD at the University of Birmingham with a thesis proposing a critical integration between German subjective rights theory and imperial legal experiences via the analysis of the Portuguese empire. Before that I received a Master of Social Sciences in Migration Studies from the University of Montpellier III, a Master of Arts in Intermediterranean Mediation from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and a Laurea Magistrale in Political Sciences and Cultural Studies on Crossing the Mediterranean from the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice. I completed my undergraduate degree in Law after having studied constitutional, comparative, and international law at the Universities of Coimbra, the University of Strasbourg, and the Federal and State Universities of Rio de Janeiro.

I have also previously worked with constitutional litigation, international mediation and arbitration, and EU policy-making on migration in European and Latin American institutions.

I am a socio-legal theorist. My research interest revolves around the issue of colonial law and colonialism, constitutional rights, and theories and practices of citizenship law. I explore those issues through (i) colonial citizenship law, (ii) comparative citizenship law, and (iii) legal epistemologies and pedagogies. In my research development, I work mainly with archival and primary sources, and I adopt a legal theory in context methodology throughout.

Regarding colonial and post-colonial citizenship law, I explore the issue especially through its expression in the former Portuguese and British empires. In doing that I pay special attention to the British-Portuguese imperial borderlands (Southern Africa, Macau and Hong Kong, and British India). I engage with that from a framework deriving from post-holocaust German constitutional theory, liberatory Freirean pedagogy, and contextualised legal theory approach. In what concerns comparative and substantive analysis of citizenship law, I develop that especially through an examination of English, French, and Portuguese-expression legal systems. In exploring legal epistemologies and pedagogies, my activity covers a broad spectrum of areas including education for emancipation, critical legal education, alternative and constructivist pedagogies, decolonisation and law, standpoint pluralism, and north-south cooperation. 

I have previously been awarded grants from the European Union (EU/ EACEA), the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), the Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA). 

• M Loureiro, Colonial citizenship: a retro-colonial theory of law, race and rights through the Portuguese empire (BUP, forthcoming).

I welcome research students from civil and common law backgrounds who want to, or are open to, take critical, comparative, and hybrid approaches in the fields of citizenship law, constitutional rights theory, colonial law, and decolonial legal studies. I also welcome applications and projects regarding theoretical and substantive aspects of nationality and citizenship law relating to legal systems of Portuguese, English, French, Italian, or Spanish expressions. 

• Colonial law 
• Colonial legal history 
• Citizenship and nationality law 
• Comparative citizenship law 
• Decolonial Legal Studies
• Comparative constitutional law
• Constitutional theory 
• Constitutional rights theory 

• Analysing Law
• Constitutional and Administrative Law

• British and Portuguese Empire
• Imperial Laws
• Colonial Migration
• British and Portuguese citizenship law

Consultancy 

• Multilingual and multicultural legal education. 
• Education for emancipation
• Education for development
• North-South educational cooperation

Reviewing 

• Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 
• African Journal of International and Comparative Law

Affiliations

• Society of Socio-Legal Studies
• IVR International Association of Legal and Social Philosophy
• Society for Latin American Studies
• Associação International de Lusitanistas

• M Loureiro (2021) ‘Constitution, indigeneity, and citizenship: analysing the roots for legal alterity in Lusophone constitutional systems’, Global Constitutionalism Scholars’ Workshop 2021 (July).
• M Loureiro (2021) ‘Global North, citizenship, and slavery: a decolonising duty?’, The Conference on Latin American and Iberian Studies 2021, University of California at Santa Barbara (April).
• M Loureiro (2021) ‘The Iberian construction of citizenship through subalternity’, Conference Showcasing Empires: The Legacy of Colonialism on Post-Imperial Societies, University of Birmingham and Aix-Marseille University (February).
• M Loureiro (2021) ‘Navigating the laws of citizenship, slavery and indigeneity: tales from the Portuguese Overseas Empire’, Socio-Legal Studies Association Conference, University of Cardiff (January).
• M Loureiro (2021) ‘Citizenship law, the para-colonial and the subaltern’, University of Swansea, Current Trends in Research on Spain, Portugal, and Latin America (January).
• M Loureiro (2020) ‘Can the subaltern speak?: Uma análise conjunta do subalterno de Spivak e da balieusarde de Houda Benyamina’, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Cerco – Controle Estatal, Racismo e Colonialidade (June).
• M Loureiro (2020) ‘Decolonising nationality law: a syncretic theory of citizenship’ Global Legal Studies, Birmingham Law School (February), Graduate Centre for Europe Workshop on Postcolonialism, University of Birmingham (February).
• M Loureiro (2019) ‘Brazilian politics in the age of Extremes - The Edge of Democracy’, Graduate Centre for Europe Talks, University of Birmingham (December).  
• M Loureiro (2019) ‘Nationality and the colonial footprint in British and Portuguese law’, British Association of Comparative Law Postgraduate Workshop, University of Lancaster (April).
• M Loureiro (2017) ‘S’ouvrir en circulant: quells dispositifs en faveur de la mobilité en Méditerranée’, Conference Jeunesses méditerranéennes, Réseau Euromed France, Foundation de France, Casablanca (April).

M Loureiro, ‘COVID in Rio: between prudent favelas and a genocide Republic, Discover Society (Policy Press Web, 21 April 2020). Available online.

Lic (Coimbra), LM (Venice), MA (Barcelona), MSSc (Montpellier), PhD (Birmingham).