Thinking about Doing Feminist Legal Work

At the Cork Irish Association of Law Teachers Conference in 2021, still in the grips of Covid, myself and Maebh Harding, stood by the river Lee having a great catch-up and chat. Maebh had returned to Ireland to work at UCD just a bit beforehand, and I had just gotten my job at Queen’s. We talked about all the challenges of moving back to the island, moving kids, finding houses and schools and getting used to working in new institutions. But we also thought to ourselves it would be nice to do something with each other, and maybe get all the feminists on the island together to do a project, or simply to create a space to meet up.

We had both worked on the Northern/Irish Feminist Judgments Project several years before, and with that and other feminist legal spaces we had been involved in, we knew how wonderful it was to be in those groups. Even when the things that we were discussing were difficult, traumatic or merely enraging, they were also spaces of camaraderie, informal mentoring and peer support and, always, very good craic. It was often a relief to be in these spaces, away from the homosocial, chest beating of much of academia, where you don’t have to explain once again that feminism is necessary, or still necessary, that you weren’t a token bit of diversity or didn’t have to deal with the usual nonsense about none of the feminists agreeing. As if all the positivist or critical scholars were entirely on the same page about anything. So, we thought, why not try to replicate that in some kind of permanent way on the island? We have this knowledge and experience, because we have had to campaign, and work and call things out, for generations. Why not create a home for that?

We left each other by the Lee, and about 12 months after, when I had started at Queen’s, the New Foundations Shared Island scheme became available. We applied and happily got 12 months of funding for Doing Feminist Legal Work.

Our first goal was to bring everyone together. There is such a wealth of knowledge and experience across research, teaching and practice in feminist legal work on the island and amongst the diaspora that having people together and communicating with each other would already create a positive space. North-South funding also includes an East-West element, and that was very important to us as well. Having both worked in Britain for well over a decade, but still being involved in feminism on the island, we understood how much the feminists in the diaspora were already highly involved and important. We also wanted to make a non-hierarchical and inclusive space, where people could ask questions, share experiences and discuss plans for the future without seeking the approval of some group or other.

To this end, we held two networking events and two workshops, focusing on research, pedagogy and activism, two in Belfast and two in Dublin. These were great. Fun was had, information, skills and knowledge were shared and new partnerships and plans hatched. From this also came the first set of our Best Practice Guides, on Rapid Legal Policy Reactions and How to Do Them, on Feminist Legal Pedagogies and How to Do Them, and Feminist Approaches to PhD Supervision.

Inevitable, the year long funding ended. But we had built so much, we wanted to continue. We have over 160 people on our mailing list now, a proper community of scholars. We were lucky enough to secure some further funding from QUB for more Best Practice Guides, on Transitioning from PhD to an Academic Career and Empirical Approaches to Family Law Research. The Law School at the University of Limerick and the University of Galway have funded in person events in 2025, with Ulster University hosting one online. Colleagues at QUB are putting together another Best Practice Guide and we have some academic publications on the way.

Which brings us to the blog. When we reached out to the DFLW community and asked whether people might be interested in a blog, we were delighted that there was such enthusiasm. Thanks, in particular, to Illan Wall for agreeing to take the editorial leadership role.

One thing that has come through in running DFLW, is that when people want to do some feminist teaching or research, it can be hard to find materials, the blog may fill this role, a repository to start with. It will also bring attention to the publications, events and activism that are happening, and perhaps do not get the coverage it deserves. It will become a repository of events, and stories. Much like this one is about how DLFW came about. It can also be site of joy, anger, celebration and memory, for all the minor and major bits of doing feminist legal work, for the feminist labour it takes, often both emotional and physical. It can also be a place to incite each other to action.