Guest Seminar: Making Sense of Transformation - From Legal Concept to Legal Practice
2025-12-01
01 and 02 December 2025 at the Leuphana University Lüneburg
In her guest seminar, Dr Laura Mai discussed the constant state of change that we are experiencing and its implications for society and law. The resulting challenges range from the climate crisis and accelerating pollution and biodiversity loss to technological disruption, new geopolitical configurations, and threats to democratic institutions at various levels of governance. Adopting a socio-legal approach, Dr Mai examined what transformative change entails, how it unfolds and who and what is involved. Moreover, she posed the following question: Which sensibilities does it invite? And which does it evacuate? Contributing to the broader debate about what the current state of change demands of law and legal institutions, her seminar offered a critical appraisal of the concept of transformation, reflecting on what engagement with the transformation trope might mean for legal scholarship.
Laura Mai is an interdisciplinary socio-legal scholar whose expertise cuts across international and transnational law and governance. Laura’s work engages with questions of climate change, digital technologies, justice, and what is commonly referred to as the ‘Anthropocene’. She has published in the Leiden Journal of International Law, Transnational Environmental Law, Global Policy, and Global Environmental Politics (amongst others). Her forthcoming monograph In A State of Change will be published with Cambridge University Press (2026).
©Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
©Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
©Leuphana Universität Lüneburg