Bodies

“Why all the fuss about the body?” Caroline Bynum first posed this provocation in the mid-1990s, prompted by a “proliferation” of new writings and theorizations, including then-recent and now-classic works by Judith Butler, bell hooks and Susan Bordo. Looking back some three decades on, we see that the ‘fuss’ was no temporary flare-up or mere passing fad. Rather, it was symptomatic of an emergent ‘bodily turn’ that has, in the years since, moved the terminology of bodies – real, imagined and metaphorical – to the foreground of critical thinking across law and the humanities.

The fruits of this turn need no special elaboration. Interventions in critical theory, performance studies, affect theory, Black studies, feminist and queer theory, posthumanism and new materialist studies have given us an array of new vocabularies and insights to bring to bear on our thinking about bodies, their meanings, entanglements and limits. The body, in Rizvana Bradley’s phrase, has become a “discursive meeting ground” for an “unwieldy multitude of concepts and debates, affects and afflictions, conflicts and contestations”, the distinctive expressions of which span multiple fields, disciplines and cultures. While not always clear whether these numerous articulations work in tandem or at cross-purposes, they have, in their very plurality, fostered a deeper engagement with, and problematization of, the “matter of bodies” (Butler). Our present moment – marked by demographic convulsions, war, enhanced practices of surveillance, ubiquitous mobile media, posthuman subjectivities, and new forms of political protest and social movements – urges us, meanwhile, to ‘fuss’ further: to give continued and renewed care to re/thinking the significance of bodies in various contexts, situations and relations. Or to ask more pointedly: do bodies still matter? And if so, why, when and how? 

In this spirit, the 2026 Critical Times summer school invites emerging scholars in law and the humanities to gather anew around the theme of ‘Bodies’. Together, we will think about bodies that assemble and disassemble, that appear and disappear, that are protected, punished, cared for, and ignored. From the vulnerable to the resistant, the human to the more-than-human, we ask how legal and cultural frameworks make some bodies visible and others invisible – and how embodiment, performance and affect shape and unsettle our legal imaginaries. 

Open to postdocs, PhDs and advanced graduate students from different disciplinary and interdisciplinary backgrounds, the aim is to create a live and lively space of inquiry and creativity – a temporary assembly of thinking, feeling, and embodied scholarship. 

Poster

Programme

The summer school programme is designed to facilitate learning and exchange in a variety of formats. Across the five mornings, faculty from the partner universities will offer a series of interdisciplinary seminars. The afternoons will be given over to presentation sessions where participants can introduce and discuss their own work. The evenings will host further events, including talks, film screenings and other social gatherings. 

Confirmed sessions

• Shane Chalmers (University of Hong Kong), Proaesthetic Bodies of Law and Colonialism 
• Julen Etxabe (University of British Columbia), Does the Law Need a Body?
• Mónica López Lerma (Reed College), Trans-Corporeal Encounters in Post-Pandemic Times: Fauna (Pau Faus, 2023) [film screening with talk]
• Greta Olson (University of Giessen), Bodies as Borders and as Sites of Legal Struggle
• Laura Petersen (University of Lucerne) and Valeria Vázquez Guevara (University of Hong Kong), Can’t Get You Out of My Head: A Conversation about Work, Play and the Performance of Academia
• Sabarish Suresh (New York University Abu Dhabi), Unicity of the Legal Body
• Illan Wall (University of Galway), Bodies in Space: Atmospheres

Applications & Fees

Applications are invited from postdocs, PhDs, and advanced graduate students – of all disciplinary backgrounds – with research interests across law, critical theory and the humanities. If you are unsure of your eligibility, please contact steven.howe@unilu.ch. 

Please complete the application form and return it, together with a short academic CV (max. two pages), as a single .pdf file to lucernaiuris@unilu.ch.

Deadline: Friday 20 March 2026.

The registration fee for the full week is CHF 400.-. This includes tuition, materials, lunches, coffee breaks and social events.

Please note that the fee does not include accommodation. Participants are required to make their own arrangements. A list of possible accommodation options is available on request.