Law as protection?
An interdisciplinary workshop on life and death in the Digital Age
When: 16 and 17 December, 2026
Where: Deakin Downtown
Globally, we are facing a series of escalating challenges and crises including wars, famine, climate change, rights regressions and backlash, democratic decline, growing inequality, an increase in preventable deaths, ecocide and genocide. Technologies of various kinds – including drones and missiles, media and social media, drugs, medical devices, financial systems, information and communication technologies and artificial intelligence – are implicated in these crises. In turn, law plays a vital role in the regulation of technologies and thus in the potential facilitation or co-constitution of crises, as well as their amelioration. To what extent does (or might) law function as a method of protection in these contexts? Does law work to protect humans and more-than-humans against these growing challenges and crises? Does it generate, exacerbate or magnify harms, or shape crises, and how might law be re-imagined and indeed remade to advance protection for humans and more-than-humans, making a positive impact when it is urgently needed?
In this special event put together by the Centre for Law as Protection at Deakin University, scholars come together to explore the relations between law, technologies and protection in a conversation at the intersections of law, theory and practice. We aim to facilitate a discussion of law’s implications for our changing world and communities, and to generate new insights for the study of law as protection. The event is explicitly interdisciplinary and collaborative and brings together scholars from a range of disciplines including law, sociology, cultural studies, history, philosophy and the sciences.
We invite proposals for the workshop that explore questions such as:
1. What is the role of law in the age of technology-facilitated crises?
2. What theories can help understand and explain the meaning of protection in the digital age?
3. Law governs core definitions of life and death (including what kind of lives are worth protecting), as well as what methods are permissible to end life – whether as a form of control on women’s bodies, as a part of the law of war, or who or what is a legitimate subject of protection. How do digital technologies challenge existing definitions and norms relating to life and death?
Call for papers
The call for papers is now open. To express interest, please submit a title, abstract for your paper (maximum 300 words), and some brief information about your interest in the workshop via this link.
The call for proposals closes on 31 July.
Successful applicants will be notified in mid-August. Spaces within the workshop will be limited. Invited participants are asked to circulate ‘thought pieces’ (3-5 pages) two weeks prior to the workshop. Each speaker will have 10-15 minutes to speak to their thought piece, followed by a 10-minute commentary by a discussant and an open discussion. This format is designed to generate critical discussion and interdisciplinary exchange, opening up new conversations and collaborations.
Keynote speakers will be announced soon.
(Artwork: ‘Target’ by Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox)
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