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The research group aims to transcend disciplinary boundaries by uniting experts across health sciences, sociology, psychology, game design, philosophy, and law in the study of avatars, which are becoming an integral part of many of our day-to-day experience. 

Leader(s)

Dr Andra Ivanescu Dr Andra Ivanescu
Email Dr Andra Ivanescu Senior Lecturer in Games Studies
Andra is a Lecturer in Game Studies and a ludomusicologist. Andra’s research interests are broad, going beyond her primary focus of music in videogames, and including appropriation and nostalgia, genre, gender studies, and film studies. Her research has been published in journals like The Soundtrack (2015) and she has presented papers at a variety of conferences including Myth, Fantasy and Fairy Tales in Literature and the Arts (Cambridge, 2013) and the Ludomusicology Conference (Chichester, 2014; Utrecht, 2015; Southampton, 2016). She is also co-editor of the academic journal Book 2.0. Andra has also led (and co-led) two Global Lives-funded research clusters focusing on creative processes in poetry and games, as well as the dissemination of academic research through digital games. Andra's first monograph - Popular Music in the Nostalgia Video Game: The Way It Never Sounded - is now available from Palgrave Macmillan. Andra teaches a number of game studies modules at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, including Game Studies 1: Introduction to Game Studies, Game Genre, and Socio-Cultural Studies. My research interests fall at the intersection between video games, music, and popular culture. Video Game Music Nostalgia Popular Music Quotation and appropriation (especially in relation to popular music and screen media) Gender Studies and Video Games Game Studies Game Genre Research Methods Socio-Cultural Studies
Dr Marcus De Matos Dr Marcus De Matos
Email Dr Marcus De Matos Senior Lecturer in Law
Marcus V. A. B. de Matos is a Senior Lecturer in the Division of Public and International Law, which he joined in July 2021. Dr De Matos is currently a Visiting Professor (CAPES Print) at the National School of Law in the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). He holds a PhD in Law from Birkbeck, University of London, fully funded by a CAPES Foundation Overseas Scholarship (0999-12-1), a MRes in Human Rights and a Bachelor’s degree in Law from UFRJ. He is an Honorary Member at the Institute of Brazilian Lawyers (IAB), and has previously been a Guest Lecturer at the State Attorney’s Office (PGE/RJ) Professional Postgraduate School, where he used to teach Legal Theory classes in the Public Law Programme. Before joining ǰ he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National School of Law in the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), funded by the Brazilian National Council of Research (CNPq). Previously he was Director of Teaching Programmes at the Judicial School in the High Labour Courts in Rio de Janeiro (TRT/RJ); Advisor to the State Secretariat for Human Rights in Rio de Janeiro (SEASDH); Visiting Researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences (ICS) in the University of Lisbon; Associate Tutor at Birkbeck College; and Part-time teacher at the London School of Economics (LSE). His research interests broadly revolve around Public Law, Legal Theory, Law & Humanities and Human Rights & Public Policy. His research offers an innovative approach of the notion of sovereignty, moving beyond the indeterminacy and agonism of legal and state forms to demonstrate the limits and the links between modern law and the aesthetic construction of the subject. He has lately been engaged in two research projects: an investigation on human rights & religion, a memory and truth project focusing on Christian leaders who were arrested and persecuted during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship (1964-1985), and currently funded by a BRIEF Award; and "Living Avatars," an interdisciplinary project studing digital avatars and funded by the ǰ Research Interdisciplinary Lab (BRIL). His most recent book is the Award-Winner monograph “Imagens da América Latina: mídia, cultura e direitos humanos” (winner of the ABEU Prize as best monograph published in 2021). Among his recent publications on Human Rights & Religion are: the Open Acces journal article "Christ and the Brazilian Revolutionary Process: religion, politics, human rights" (Journal of Social Rights and Public Policy, 2022); the journal article "When the rooster insists on crowing: church, state and human rights in contemporary Brazil" (Journal of Latin American Theology, 2020); and a blog post to Critical Legal Thinking: "Jesus fights back: Easter torture & Reverse racism". He has been awarded an Honourable Mention by José Bonifácio Academic Foundation (FUJB) and has been the recipient of several grants by academic and government funding bodies such as the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, the Brazilian Ministry of Education, the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Secretariat of Human Rights (SDH), and the Harvard Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP). Dr De Matos has worked as a researcher and consultant proving academic and legal advice to third sector organisations such as the Institute for the ǰ of Religion (ISER), World Vision, Tearfund, and Rede FALE. He currently collaborates with Peace and Hope Brazil and is a founding member of RECAP - a popular legal network that freely provides legal & advocacy support for individuals and organizations on pressing human rights cases in Brazil. He is also a board member of the Brazilian Association of Academics and Students in the UK (ABEP-UK). He is the recepient of the BRIEF Award 2023/2024, and of the HE Connects grant by the British Council. He tweets in Portuguese and English from @mvdematos. My research is focused on the notion of state sovereignty as a founding paradox in legal and constitutional theory. I have developed a visual investigation on the notion of sovereignty by taking it not only as a founding concept of modern legal theory, but also as a trope: a special kind of narrative, illustrated, capable of being modernized, and yet maintaining its initial trends; one that is foundational and colonial, and capable of institutionalizing sovereigns and subjecting subjects. My research discusses the problematic relation between law and image from the analysis of digital pictures of torture and surveillance produced by contemporary films, social media and government agencies. It is based on methodological approaches developed in the fields of critical legal studies and visual culture studies and proposes a new iconocritical method to analyse the entanglement of aesthetics and authority in the functions of the role of images and the rule of law. This has led me to investigate different ways in which legal subjectivity can be designed to accommodate notions of state sovereignty that are supposed to be incompatible with democracy and the rule of law - such as in transitional, post-colonial or authoritarian political contexts. I am particularly interested in the collusion of legal, political, native and theological conceptions of sovereignty in Latin American, African and Iberian countries. A second strand of my research incorporates my government-based work experience in human rights and public policies. I am interested in issues such as constitutional & political freedom, memory & truth, separation of powers, freedom of speech and religion; protection of witnesses, journalists and human rights activist; equality, native rights and racism; slavery, human trafficking, torture and surveillance. I am also interested in understanding how technique and technology currently affect these issues and their legal and political contexts. I currently co-lead two Research Groups: Human Rights, Society and Arts Living Avatars I have received the BRIEF Award 2023/2024 to develop my project "Human Rights, Religion and the Cold War: building an archive about the Persecution of Brazilian Religious Leaders." I have recently worked on two funded projects: "Human Rights & Religion: the legacy of the Brazilian 1962 North-Eastern Conference for public theology and democracy", funded by ǰ Institute of Communities and Societies (2021-2022). "Living avatars: projections of self, others and power," funded by BRIL, the ǰ Research Interdisciplinary Lab (2021-2022). I am currently an international collaborator to the Fazenda da Posse Project - The History of Brazilian Justice: delivering judgment and evidence in Barra Mansa City trials (1920-1988). This is a project lead by State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), and funded by FAPERJ, CAPES and Barra Mansa City Council Culture Foundation. Brazilian & Latin American law, history and politics Critical legal studies and methods Feminist Approaches to Law History of Law, Racism and Colonialism Human Rights history, methods and philosophy Jurisprudence (Legal Theory) Legal history of Fascism, Populism and Authoritarianism Law and Film Law and Literature Law and Religion Legal methods & legal systems Natural Law and its critics Public Law & Political Theology Transitional justice and The Right to Memory Public Law Land Law Parliamentary Studies Theory and Practice of Human Rights (LLM)

Members

Professor William Watkin Professor William Watkin
Email Professor William Watkin Professor - English
William Watkin is Professor of Contemporary Philosophy and Literature. He has been at ǰ University since 1999, and has held a personal Chair there since 2008. He is currently Director of Research for the Arts and Humanities Department, a position he has held more than once. During his time at ǰ he has also served as Head of English and of the English and Creative Writing Division and Deputy Head of the School. Professor Watkin has extensive experience with research assessment. He wrote English’s successful RAE2008 bid, our first submission as a unit to the RAE. He then supervised the early stages of our successful REF 2014 bid, overseeing the school’s internal mock-REF. He took over the final stages of the REF2021 submission, creating a vision for the division "Transforming the Literary Landscape." This submission was highly commended by the university and resulted in one of the highest GPAs at ǰ. Prof. Watkin’s research profile is extremely well-established, highly-regarded, influential and wide-ranging. His main area of interest for the last decade has been the philosophy of indifference. Although a well-established philosopher, Watkin began his career working on contemporary poetics and literary theory and wrote three books in this area. The third of these "The Literary Agamben", was highly regarded by Agamben himself and paved the way for the second phase of Watkin's career as he transitioned from a literary theorist to a continental philosopher. Watkin is the world's leading expert on the philosophy of Giorgio Agamben. Of his fourth book "Agamben and Indifference" Agamben himself wrote: "Watkin has produced a work of astonishing originality, which any attempt to read twentieth-century philosophy will be obliged to confront”. Of the same book leading philosoher François Laruelle wrote: “Watkin’s sharp lens is indispensable for those who want to grasp a central aspect of contemporary philosophy." Watkin is also one of the leading voices on the philosophy of Alain Badiou having written two books on key concepts in Badiou's overall project: "Badiou and Indifferent Being" and "Badiou and Communicable Worlds". Watkin's seventh book, "Bioviolence: How the powers that be make us do what they want" applies his philosophy of indifference to biopolitical theory, another area where he has extensive expertise. "Bioviolence" is also the first attempt by Watkin to apply indifferential thought to contemporary, real-world examples. This project is continued in his next book "Herd Immunities: The Philosophy of Covid" which analyses the global pandemic using the indifferential reasoning he has developed in the earlier work. Watkin is a published journalist with articles in The Independent, The Week, Newsweek Europe, The Big Issue, The Conversation, The New Philosopher, TES and The White Review. He has made various media appearances, and is also also a blogger and film-maker. He has a strong interest in the internet, social media, disinformation and, more recently AI. He is also a painter and large abstract acrylics. Many of the covers of his books were painted by him. Research Areas: Continental philosophy: Agamben, Badiou, Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Kristeva, Nancy, Esposito Analytical philosophy: Extensional logic, Frege, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine Literary Theory Contemporary and Modern Poetics Violence Biopolitics Covid Social media, AI and digital culture Prof. Watkin will supervise projects on any aspects of the work of Agamben, Badiou, Nancy and Deleuze. Further he will consider supervising students on any areas of literary theory, continental philosophy, contemporary literature, experimental poetry and poetics in general. His current research interest is indifference as a development, completion and critique of discourses of difference that have predominated in the humanities for the last forty years. He just completed a monograph on the work of philosopher Giorgio Agamben in relation to indifference. Agamben is one of Watkin’s areas of specialisation, having published the first critical monograph on Agamben and literature in 2010. He is currently working on Deleuze and indifference. His other major project is a consideration of the complex relation between poetry and philosophy since Heidegger, which conceives of poetry/literature as a mode of thinking or, as Watkin calls it, logopoiesis. His 2010 Agamben monograph is part of a three volume study of logopoiesis which will include work on Nancy and Badiou in the years to come. Previously Watkin has published books on the New York School of poetry in relation to avant-gardism and theoretical consideration of literatures of mourning in the modern era. He has published numerous articles on contemporary experimental poetry: Ashbery, O’Hara, Koch, Schulyer, Hejinian, Silliman, Bernstein, and Du Plessis Contemporary Poetry and Poetics Literature and Philosophy Contemporary Continental Philosophy: Agamben, Badiou, Deleuze, Nancy Indifference William Watkin has taught a wide variety of areas at ǰ. His current teaching interests revolve around the changing face of literary theory in the new millennium. He runs courses on the relation of philosophy to literature and the arts from the historical origins of aesthetics through to the most contemporary philosophical statements on aesthetics and literature. He has also taught contemporary literature for many years, specialising in contemporary poetry and poetics. He has a wider interest in poetics and has taught the history of poetry. Another interest is the avant-garde and experimentalism. He taught modernism and the avant-garde for many years and continues to run seminars on experimental, contemporary poetry. Activities: Key Publications: “The Poetics of Presentation: Lyn Hejinian’s My Life Project and the work of Giorgio Agamben” Textual Practice 2012. “The / Turn and the “ ” Pause: Agamben, Derrida and the Stratification of Poetry” in Textures Series, Lexington Press 2011. “Poetry’s Promiscuous Plurality: On a Part of Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Muses[PG1] ” in Jean-Luc Nancy and Plural Thinking SUNY 2011. The Literary Agamben: Adventures in Logopoiesis (London: Continuum University Press, March 2010). “Derrida’s Limits: Aporias between ‘Ousia and Grammē’,” Derrida Today 3.1 (2010): 113-136. “Projective Recursion: The Structure of Ron Silliman’s Tjanting,” Jacket 39 (2010). “Taking steps beyond elegy: poetry, philosophy, lineation, and death,” Textual Practice 23.6 (2009): 1051-1065. “The Materialization of Prose: Poiesis versus Dianoia in the work of Godzich & Kittay, Schklovsky, Silliman and Agamben,” Paragraph 31.3 (2008): 344-364. “‘Systematic rule-governed violations of convention’: Ron Silliman’s Poetic Procedures,” Contemporary Literature 48.4, 2007: 499-529. “Counterchange: Derrida’s Poetry,” in Encountering Derrida: Legacies and Futures of Deconstruction (London: Continuum, 2007). On Mourning: Theories of Loss in Modern Literature. (Edinburgh University Press, 2004). “Revolution, Melancholia and Materiality in the Work of Julia Kristeva”. Paragraph 26.3 (2003): 86-107. “Friendly Little Communities: Derrida’s Politics of Death.” Strategies: Journal of Theory, Culture and Politics 15.2 (2002): 219-237. In the Process of Poetry: The New York School and the Avant-Garde. (Lewisburg, Penn.: Bucknell University Press, 2001). “Poetry Machines: Repetition in the Early Poetry of Kenneth Koch.” EnterText 1.1 (Dec. 2000): 83-117.
Dr Pin Lean Lau Dr Pin Lean Lau
Email Dr Pin Lean Lau Senior Lecturer in Bio Law
Pin Lean is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Bio-Law at ǰ Law School, joining ǰ in January 2021. A former practising barrister and solicitor, she was a corporate-commercial attorney working primarily in corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, technology law, and general corporate advisory matters. Prior to joining ǰ University, she was an attorney on secondment with the Legal Services Team (based in Belgrave, London) in the General Counsel's Organization of American Express International, where she was a key senior legal counsel for the Asia-Pacific region. She obtained her SJD in Comparative Constitutional Law from Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, in 2019 (nostrified in the UK in 2020), earning highest honours, Summa cum Laude, for her thesis titled 'Comparative Legal Frameworks for Pre-Implantation Genetic Interventions' (which has been written into a monograph published by Springer Switzerland). Pin Lean is the General Manager of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence: Social & Digital Innovations. She is an active member of the ǰ International Law Research Group, Living Avatars Research Group, the Human Rights, Society and the Arts Research Group, and Reproduction Research Group. Externally, she is part of the ELSI2.0 Workspace, an international collaboratory on genomics and society research; a member of the European Association of Health Law (EAHL), and a General Manager of the Interest Group on Supranational Bio-Law of the EAHL; and a member of the Daughters of Themis: International Network of Women Business Scholars. She has held visiting fellowships with the Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies (HeLEX), NDPH (Medical Sciences Division), University of Oxford; the Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences (CELLs) at the University of Hannover, Germany; and participated in the Centre for Ethics and Law in Biomedicine (CELAB) in Central European University, Hungary. Pin Lean also leads the UK & European chapter of the global Responsible Metaverse Alliance as Director of Research; and is an invited member of the United Nations (UN) International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Working Group on the Metaverse, focusing on competition, economics, standards and regulatory aspects of the Metaverse. Her research encompasses European, international, and comparative law for genome editing (with a focus on pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, reproductive technologies and women's bodies; and the proliferation of virulent gene-edited pathogens and global bio-security); propertization and commodification studies of genetic materials and biomedical technologies; the ethico-legal governance for artificial intelligence (AI) systems (with a focus on protection of fundamental rights, spatial 'body citizenship' and bio-constitutional implications of the AI-augmented biological human body, and AI in women's health); and technologies horizon scanning and legal future foresighting for new and emerging technologies and environments, such as the Metaverse. She has written widely on topics straddling the fringes of laws, technologies and society, and has been invited as a speaker by many national and international organisations, including on podcasts relating to technologies, and media interviews with news organisations in the UK, US, France, Germany, Brazil, Hungary, Malaysia, Japan, and India. Recently, she was invited as an expert panelist by the UK regulatory alliance, the Digital Cooperation Regulation Forum (DRCF) in its first Metaverse Symposium. She has also consulted as an expert with the UK Law Society on technologies and horizon scanning in its Future Worlds 2050 Project. Pin Lean previously consulted on a multi-trust funded project for the World Health Organization (WHO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the OiE (World Organization for Animal Health), on developing and piloting of a Tripartite One Health Assessment Tool for Antimicrobial Resistance Relevant Legislation. She also completed a project with researchers from the EAHL to produce a Joint Statement for the European Commission's 2021 Thematic Networks, with a proposal for Health as a Fundamental Value, as part of the EU Pharmaceutical Strategy. She led a project on AI-driven technologies in women's healthcare, funded by the Institute for Communities & Society. Besides this, she is also working on several book projects, including health and IP rights in EU health law, and EU health databases; on the EU Draft Law for Artificial Intelligence and data protection; on AI gender data gap and data feminism; and on FemTech and effective AI stewardship for women's healthcare. She is also a contributor in the EuroGCT Project (European Gene & Cell Therapy Project) funded by the European Commission's Horizon 2020 Work Programme, contributing in the area of data misuse and mission creep in EU health laws relating to patient involvement and patient data. She was the keynote speaker, with the presentation titled 'Hidden Figures: Algorithmic Biases in Health and Medical AI - European Law Perspectives' at the XVI Inter-Autonomous Conference on the Legal Protection of Patients: Science and Data as Ingredients for the Transformation of Healthcare Organisations. She led a European Commission Health Policy Platform project, together with civil society organisation, Health Action International, to produce a Joint Statement and policy recommendations for the European Commission 2022 Thematic Networks, on the impact of artificial intelligence on health outcomes (reducing health inequalities) of marginalised groups in the EU - presenting this report to the European Commission in Luxembourg in April 2023. She currently leads the Stakeholder Network for this project on the EU Health Policy Platform. From August 2023, Pin Lean leads a project (Lex-HMT) focusing on legal and regulatory aspects of immersive biomedical technologies in virtual worlds, and is expected to provide oral evidence to the AI All-Parliamentary Group (AI APPG) in the UK House of Lords in November 2023. She has also recently been successful as Co-Investigator in a UKRI-funded regulatory science & innovation network funding application with The Global Counsel and Digital Catapult, on spatial computing, web3.0 and the Metaverse. Pin Lean's research interests encompass European, international and comparative law for genome editing (with a focus on pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, reproductive technologies and women's bodies; and the proliferation of virulent gene-edited pathogens and global bio-security); propertization and commodication studies and debates of genetic materials and biomedical technologies; and the ethico-legal governance of AI systems (with a focus on AI in healthcare, and the protection of individual rights and fundamental liberties in AI, spatial 'body citizenship', and bio-constitutional concerns of the AI-augmented biological human body; and AI, gender data gap and data feminism in women's healthcare); and technologies horizon scanning and legal future foresighting for new and emerging technologies and environments, such as the Metaverse. Bio-constitutionalism and human rights implications of new and emerging biomedical technologies (gene editing, artificial intelligence, 3D organ bioprinting, xenotransplantation, cryo-preservation, reproductive cloning, etc) Bioethics and feminist legal approaches to bioethics European, international and comparative law for genome editing technologies (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and reproductive technologies) Ethico-legal governance of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, particularly AI in healthcare Protection of human rights and fundamental liberties in the Metaverse and Web3.0 Admitted as a Fellow of the HEA (March 2022) Modules Taught:- Tort Law Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Law (AI and Health in the Metaverse) Artificial Intelligence, Bias and Power Law, Science, and Technology Studies (genome editing technologies) Bioethics and Biomedical Law