Claerwen O’Hara
LightNews LightNews
banner
claerwen.bsky.social
Claerwen O’Hara
@claerwen.bsky.social
1.9K followers 510 following 76 posts
Critical international law. Lecturer at Melbourne Law School, Co-Chair of the ANZSIL Gender, Sexuality and Int’ Law Interest Group & Editor, Australian Feminist Law Journal | they 💖💜💙
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
rlopez.bsky.social
Published today—at the start of Transgender Awareness Week—in the American Journal of International Law, my new book review, "International Law as a Site for Queer Joy?" arrives at a moment that feels both personal and profound.

Now up at @ssrn.bsky.social : papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
International Law as a Site for Queer Joy?
This essay reviews two recent edited volumes—Queer Engagements with International Law: Times, Spaces, Imaginings and Queer Encounters with International Law: Li
papers.ssrn.com
November 14, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
ntinatzouvala.bsky.social
Together with @wanshucong.bsky.social we put together a symposium on the 20th anniversary of Anghie's pathbreaking Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of IL. Our introduction is here: cil.nus.edu.sg/blog/symposi.... Terrific contributions to come including a generous response by Prof. Anghie.
cil.nus.edu.sg
November 12, 2025 at 5:29 AM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
ntinatzouvala.bsky.social
There has been-ahem-a lot going on in international law. in this brief chapter, I tried to take stock of the past two years and what they mean for critical IL. TL;DR: the old moves REALLY don't work anymore: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Critical International Law amongst the Ruins
<span>This chapter consists of two decidedly uneven parts: a landscape and an explosion. In the first section, I offer an overview of the evolution of critical
papers.ssrn.com
November 2, 2025 at 10:15 PM
claerwen.bsky.social
I had such a wonderful time over the past few days convening the @anzsilgsil.bsky.social
workshop at Melbourne Law School on Feminist Approaches to International Law in Times of Atrocity, Anthropocene and Authoritarian Capitalism with my dear friend @pagingdrpaige.bsky.social
October 31, 2025 at 6:34 PM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
pagingdrpaige.bsky.social
Academic selfie: day 2 of the @anzsilgsil.bsky.social workshop is done edition
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 AM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
pagingdrpaige.bsky.social
Academic selfie: day one of the @anzsilgsil.bsky.social workshop on Feminism in the time of Atrocity, Anthropocene and Authoritarian Capitalism is done, but I was too busy talking to people to remember to take a selfie with the wonderful people in attendance edition
October 30, 2025 at 9:55 AM
claerwen.bsky.social
On the eve of another workshop I’m organising with my comrade @pagingdrpaige.bsky.social, it is delightful to read through this warm and generous review of the edited books that emerged from our last one - by the amazing @staceyhenderson.bsky.social! To many more queer & feminist conversations!
pagingdrpaige.bsky.social Dr Tamsin Phillipa Paige @pagingdrpaige.bsky.social · 22d
I was delighted to read the review that @staceyhenderson.bsky.social wrote of the queer sibling books that I edited with @claerwen.bsky.social ... on the eve of another @anzsilgsil.bsky.social workshop!

law.adelaide.edu.au/adelaide-law...
Adelaide Law Review
law.adelaide.edu.au
October 29, 2025 at 8:58 AM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
flsjournal.bsky.social
We are still open to submissions for our upcoming special issue, “Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope.”

Please share this call for papers with anyone you think interested. The deadline for abstracts is Friday 31st October.

🏳️‍⚧️
flsjournal.bsky.social Feminist Legal Studies @flsjournal.bsky.social · Sep 22
📣🏳️‍⚧️ Call for Papers

We are inviting papers for our special issue, “Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope.” The issue will be dedicated to trans-inclusive feminist legal analysis that addresses attacks on trans rights & lives.

Details below. Please share.
Call for Papers: Special Issue of Feminist Legal Studies Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope Amidst continuing backlash against trans rights, recognition and inclusion, two recent decisions from the UK have substantially impacted not only trans people’s legal status but also legal and social narratives of sex, gender and identity. The narrative that trans inclusion has a chilling effect on the rights of others, particularly women, has been adopted uncritically by both the UK Supreme Court in For Women Scotland and the Office for Students in its finding that the University of Sussex’s trans-inclusion policy had a chilling effect on free speech. These cases highlight a backlash that has been ongoing for some time, and sparks debates and fear of what may lie in the near future for trans people and kin, as well as other gender-variant persons, not only in the UK, but across jurisdictions and in a global perspective. The discourse of the ‘gender critical’ movement is splintering both the feminist and LGBT+ movements globally, with some aligning politically with the Far- and Christian Right against trans rights, adopting their terminology of ‘gender ideology’ and potentially posing a wider threat to sexual and reproductive rights. While this a difficult situation for trans people, kin and allies, this special issue seeks to emphasise that legal battles – including battles (temporarily) lost – are also an opportunity to seek to reinforce old alliances and to form new ones, to find new legal frontiers and imaginaries, to reinforce the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of legal arguments as well as intergenerational memory of what feminist legal work is, has been and should be about. How, we ask, do these decisions (and those like them globally) reflect and reproduce structures of coloniality, heteronormativity and cisnormativity? What do these decisions add to critiques of legal feminism? What would be construct…
October 19, 2025 at 10:45 AM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
sophiejrigney.bsky.social
The next piece in our Special Issue on abolition and International Criminal Law is now out: Martin Clark on the relationships between domestic and international abolitions: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Abolitions, Domestic and International
Recent calls for an abolition movement for international (criminal) law take their grounding in decades of abolition writing built from local and national struggles against incarceration, police br...
www.tandfonline.com
October 9, 2025 at 9:52 PM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
djag2.bsky.social
In our latest episode, @ntinatzouvala.bsky.social speaks with Ardi Imseis about the recent recognition of Palestine by western states and the history of the UN’s “rule by law” in relation to Palestine and the construction of its legal subalternity. #CalledToTheBar

soundcloud.com/calledtotheb...
54. Recognition, the United Nations and the Question of Palestine
In this episode, host Dr Ntina Tzouvala is joined by Professor Ardi Imseis (Queen’s Law School, Canada) for a timely conversation about international law, the United Nations, and the long struggle for
soundcloud.com
October 4, 2025 at 10:07 AM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
unamcilvenna.bsky.social
Part time research assistant position in Melbourne working with the incomparable Jordy Silverstein on statelessness, migration, and intergenerational memory! unimelb.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/UoM_Ex...
Research Associate
Role type: Part-Time (0.2 FTE) Fixed-Term for 3 years Faculty: Melbourne Law School Salary: Level A $85,555.00 - $116,094.00 p.a. plus 17% super  Provide vital research support to an ARC Future Fellow...
unimelb.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com
October 3, 2025 at 6:16 AM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
jtheilen.bsky.social
An important and wide-ranging interview with Nahed Samour on international law and Palestine, among other things on the role of law and narrative, on the relation between positivism and critique, and on transnational resistance: academic.oup.com/lril/advance...
International law, populism and Palestine: an interview with Nahed Samour
In this interview, Dr Richard Joyce and Professor Sundhya Pahuja are joined by German-Palestinian international legal scholar, Dr Nahed Samour, currently b
academic.oup.com
October 2, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
illanwall.bsky.social
Delighted to have my work on affective tension monitoring and the internal security apparatus accepted in Social and Legal Studies. This is the pre-print version. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Public Order and the Internal Security Apparatus: Affective Tension Monitoring as Police Epistemology
Farmer develops the concept of the civil order to help understand the function of criminal law, but civil order is a particularly capacious concept. In this art
papers.ssrn.com
September 30, 2025 at 8:09 AM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
anzsilgsil.bsky.social
Registrations are now open for our workshop on 'Feminist Approaches to International Law in Times of Atrocity, Anthropocene, and Authoritarian Capitalism'! The workshop will be hybrid and take place on 30 & 31 October at Melbourne Law School. See the draft program: drive.google.com/file/d/1YbYn...
September 30, 2025 at 4:23 AM
claerwen.bsky.social
I’m really looking forward to this workshop that I’m co-organising with @pagingdrpaige.bsky.social! If you’d like to join us online, register here: www.eventbrite.com.au/e/feminist-a... or get in touch to join in person (limited spots available)
September 30, 2025 at 4:33 AM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
pagingdrpaige.bsky.social
Some gifts are so thoughtful that you can't express how much you appreciate them. Many thanks to @matteobassetti.bsky.social for this watercolour impression of my sky pirate microstate idea. Even if you can't get it from the sketchbook knowing it exists warms my heart 🥰
September 27, 2025 at 10:12 AM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
aoifemod.bsky.social
Wrote this piece on the need to recognise gendered oppression - in all its forms - as always the path to #tyranny.

Gendered domination is alway present but failing to confront that = also failing to see the rapid return to patriarchy as the first sign of authoritarianism

dflw.ie/power-gender...
Power, Gender and Tyranny in Our Time - Doing Feminist Legal Work
While writing my monograph On Tyranny and the Global Legal Order, the frequent appearance of gender struck me. But, more startling, how little remarked upon
dflw.ie
September 23, 2025 at 9:15 AM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
flsjournal.bsky.social
📣🏳️‍⚧️ Call for Papers

We are inviting papers for our special issue, “Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope.” The issue will be dedicated to trans-inclusive feminist legal analysis that addresses attacks on trans rights & lives.

Details below. Please share.
Call for Papers: Special Issue of Feminist Legal Studies Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope Amidst continuing backlash against trans rights, recognition and inclusion, two recent decisions from the UK have substantially impacted not only trans people’s legal status but also legal and social narratives of sex, gender and identity. The narrative that trans inclusion has a chilling effect on the rights of others, particularly women, has been adopted uncritically by both the UK Supreme Court in For Women Scotland and the Office for Students in its finding that the University of Sussex’s trans-inclusion policy had a chilling effect on free speech. These cases highlight a backlash that has been ongoing for some time, and sparks debates and fear of what may lie in the near future for trans people and kin, as well as other gender-variant persons, not only in the UK, but across jurisdictions and in a global perspective. The discourse of the ‘gender critical’ movement is splintering both the feminist and LGBT+ movements globally, with some aligning politically with the Far- and Christian Right against trans rights, adopting their terminology of ‘gender ideology’ and potentially posing a wider threat to sexual and reproductive rights. While this a difficult situation for trans people, kin and allies, this special issue seeks to emphasise that legal battles – including battles (temporarily) lost – are also an opportunity to seek to reinforce old alliances and to form new ones, to find new legal frontiers and imaginaries, to reinforce the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of legal arguments as well as intergenerational memory of what feminist legal work is, has been and should be about. How, we ask, do these decisions (and those like them globally) reflect and reproduce structures of coloniality, heteronormativity and cisnormativity? What do these decisions add to critiques of legal feminism? What would be construct…
September 22, 2025 at 9:35 AM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
jtheilen.bsky.social
Another article from our special issue on frames of human rights is out: @esrademir.bsky.social’s fantastic piece on oppositional frames, analysing how concepts like authoritarianism and populism are used and what this tells us about the Council of Europe itself

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
A screenshot of the article’s abstract, entitled “The shifting frames of the Council of Europe: from totalitarianism to authoritarianism, from populism to democratic backsliding”
September 17, 2025 at 6:56 AM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
sophiejrigney.bsky.social
The first piece in our Special Issue on ICL & abolition is out! It is an incredible essay by @disposablehuman.bsky.social & @debbiekilroy.bsky.social on 'the brutal realities of incarceration, particularly for Indigenous women in Australia.' Open Access here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
A Prison is a Prison is a Prison
This essay reflects on the brutal realities of incarceration, particularly for Indigenous women in Australia. It begins with the tragic death of Selesa Tafaifa, who was killed in custody, highlight...
www.tandfonline.com
September 17, 2025 at 4:22 AM
claerwen.bsky.social
Reminder that applications for this position close this Friday!
aflj.bsky.social Australian Feminist Law Journal @aflj.bsky.social · Aug 18
The AFLJ is looking for a Publication and Media Support Officer to assist with its copyediting, outreach and engagement activities! Are you a Melbourne-based graduate researcher with an interest in feminism and law? This position could be perfect for you! drive.google.com/file/d/16z3u...
Publication and Media Support Officer (AFLJ) Position Description.pdf
drive.google.com
September 10, 2025 at 7:47 AM
claerwen.bsky.social
Pleased to have participated in a radio interview with Tess Matthews on yesterday’s episode of Done by Law on 3CR about the history and future of international law. If you’re interested, you can listen here: www.3cr.org.au/donebylaw
Done By Law
DONE BY LAW is grassroots radio for social justice on community radio station 3CR in Melbourne, Australia. We have been on the air since 1980, giving listeners our unique and irreverent take on curren...
www.3cr.org.au
September 9, 2025 at 11:13 PM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
pagingdrpaige.bsky.social
I had a blast talking about to my old friend and mentor Rob McLaughlin and the phenomenal @alonso-gd.bsky.social about why sinking random "drug" vessels is lawless AF
September 9, 2025 at 9:51 AM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
aflj.bsky.social
🌻Read Gozde Turan's new article, 'Sexual and Gender Based Violence Only for the ‘Others’? A fantastic contribution to the discourse around sexual and gender-based crimes in conflict.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Sexual and Gender Based Violence Only for the ‘Others’? The Islamic State against Muslim Women
This article is an inquiry into the limits of international criminal law (ICL) to pursue feminist goals. It argues that international criminal courts and tribunals have failed to prosecute intra-gr...
www.tandfonline.com
August 28, 2025 at 5:39 AM
Reposted by Claerwen O’Hara
aflj.bsky.social
✨ Read the new paper from Maksim Lavrik, in which the author argues that the subordination of environmental protection to the necessities of economic development has similarities with the long history of women’s oppression. Interesting and timely.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Translation of Consent from Gender and Feminist Studies to Biodiversity Law
Global biodiversity loss requires an assessment of the effectiveness of the existing legal frameworks and the construction of new ones when needed. The subordination of environmental protection to ...
www.tandfonline.com
August 28, 2025 at 5:42 AM