The Power of Many Stories: Autobiography, Epistemic Authority and Decolonising Legal Education by Renginee Pillay (University of Greenwich)
A BSA Auto/Biography Study Group Event
4 February 2027 (1700-1800 GMT)
Online
About the Event
Abstract
What changes when law students’ autobiographical accounts are treated not simply as reflections on legal education, but as knowledge about legal education? This seminar draws on Connecting Law and Life: The Power of Many Stories, a student–staff research partnership at the University of Greenwich involving undergraduate Global Majority law students.
Funded by the University’s Undergraduate Research Hub within the Institute for Inclusive Communities and Environments, the project was grounded in partnership and co-creation and used autobiographical reflection to explore students’ experiences of law, learning and emerging legal professional identity. Central to the project was an understanding of students’ lived experiences as forms of knowledge through which legal education itself could be examined and challenged.
Drawing on narratives of belonging and exclusion, visibility and silence, confidence and uncertainty, the seminar considers the decolonial possibilities of autobiography as a pedagogical and epistemic practice. It asks how lived experience can expose assumptions about neutrality, authority and legitimate knowledge, while confronting the power inequalities that remain within student–staff partnership.
I argue that decolonising legal education requires attention not only to what and how we teach, but to whose knowledge is recognised as capable of telling us what legal education is.
Registration
- Auto/biography Study Group Member/BSA Member: FREE
- Non-Member: £10
Zoom joining instructions will be sent approximately 24 hours in advance of the event. We hope you can join us.
Please share information about our events and the work of the Auto/Biography Study Group with interested colleagues.