Senthorun Raj
Senthorun (Sen) Raj is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Human Rights Law at Manchester Law School (MMU) and a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. His research and advocacy interests include LGBTIQ+ rights, emotion, culture, equalities and human rights law, legal education, and critical legal theory. His new book, Feeling Queer Jurisprudence: Injury, Intimacy, Identity (Routledge, 2020), explores the ways emotions shape legal progress for LGBT people. He is co-editor of The Queer Outside in Law: Recognising LGBTIQ People in the United Kingdom (Palgrave, 2020) and The Queer Judgments Project (Counterpress, forthcoming).
Sen's interdisciplinary academic background is situated in cultural studies and law. He graduated from the University of Sydney with a BA (Hons), LLB (Hons), and PhD (Law). His Honours thesis on sexual orientation asylum claims in Australia was awarded the Australian Lesbian & Gay Archives Thesis Prize and the University of Sydney Medal. He recently completed a PGCert in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. Prior to working at Manchester Law School, Sen was based at the School of Law at Keele University.
Sen was a former Scholar in Residence at NYU School of Law's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. He also completed a Churchill Fellowship examining sexual orientation and gender identity refugee claims in the UK, US and Australia.
Sen is on the Editorial Board of Palgrave Macmillan's Book Series on Socio-Legal Studies, where he leads on commissioning books on Queer Law.
Sen has previously worked in government relations and law reform as the Senior Policy Advisor for the NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby in Australia. He is currently the chair of Amnesty International UK.
Twitter: @senthorun
Sen's interdisciplinary academic background is situated in cultural studies and law. He graduated from the University of Sydney with a BA (Hons), LLB (Hons), and PhD (Law). His Honours thesis on sexual orientation asylum claims in Australia was awarded the Australian Lesbian & Gay Archives Thesis Prize and the University of Sydney Medal. He recently completed a PGCert in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. Prior to working at Manchester Law School, Sen was based at the School of Law at Keele University.
Sen was a former Scholar in Residence at NYU School of Law's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. He also completed a Churchill Fellowship examining sexual orientation and gender identity refugee claims in the UK, US and Australia.
Sen is on the Editorial Board of Palgrave Macmillan's Book Series on Socio-Legal Studies, where he leads on commissioning books on Queer Law.
Sen has previously worked in government relations and law reform as the Senior Policy Advisor for the NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby in Australia. He is currently the chair of Amnesty International UK.
Twitter: @senthorun
less
InterestsView All (34)
Uploads
Books by Senthorun Raj
Editorial Board member, Senthorun Raj, is leading a call for proposals on Queer Law for the series. 'Queer' and 'law' often come into conflict.
Queer, as a dynamic theoretical position, produces frameworks to analyse, critique, represent, and politicise non-normativity, typically in relation to minoritised bodies, intimacies, genders, and sexualities. Law, as a system of norms and rules, produces frameworks to define, categorise, and regulate individuals and societies by cultivating normativity within specific jurisdictions. Yet, when 'queer' and 'law' are connected through conflicts, we see how they undermine normative/non-normative, static/fluid, queer/non-queer, and doctrinal/critical binaries.
This series invites monographs, short Pivots (25-50k words), and edited collections which engage with these productive conflicts. Books in this series will foreground the possibilities of using legal subjects (litigants, lawyers, judges, remedies, rules, doctrines, judgments)-by holding on the normative-to address questions of liberty, dignity, identity, and equality relevant to socially marginalised communities. Books in the series will also engage with queer subjects (sexual and gender minorities, peripheral intimacies, social failure, anti-foundational critical theories, affects)-by holding on the non-normative-to disrupt and reshape legal parameters of recognition and inclusion.
This series particularly welcomes contributions from early career scholars researching topics relating to: • Queer methods of litigation, advocacy, and adjudication. • Legal and policy interventions aimed at queer lives, bodies, cultures, and communities. • The relationship between pursuits of queer activism, law reform, and policy change. • Queer articulations of legal rights, benefits, entitlements, responsibilities, and jurisdictions. • Queer engagements with legal research, scholarship, teaching, and writing.
Please get in contact with Dr Sen Raj (s.raj@mmu.ac.uk) to discuss book ideas.
Scholars, activists, lawyers, and judges concerned with eliminating violence and discrimination against LGBT people have generated passionate conversations about pursuing law reform to make LGBT injuries, intimacies, and identities visible, while some challenge the ways legal systems marginalise queer minorities. Senthorun Sunil Raj powerfully contributes to these ongoing conversations by using emotion as an analytic frame to reflect on the ways case law seeks to "progress" the intimacies and identities of LGBT people from positions of injury. This book catalogues a range of cases from Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom to unpack how emotion shapes the decriminalisation of homosexuality, hate crime interventions, anti-discrimination measures, refugee protection, and marriage equality. While emotional enactments in pro-LGBT jurisprudence enable new forms of recognition and visibility, they can also work, paradoxically, to cover over queer intimacies and identities. Raj innovatively shows that reading jurisprudence through emotions can make space in law to affirm, rather than disavow, intimacies and identities that queer conventional ideas about "LGBT progress", without having to abandon legal pursuits to protect LGBT people.
This book will be of interest to students and scholars of human rights law, gender and sexuality studies, and socio-legal theory.
Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Senthorun Raj
Editorial Board member, Senthorun Raj, is leading a call for proposals on Queer Law for the series. 'Queer' and 'law' often come into conflict.
Queer, as a dynamic theoretical position, produces frameworks to analyse, critique, represent, and politicise non-normativity, typically in relation to minoritised bodies, intimacies, genders, and sexualities. Law, as a system of norms and rules, produces frameworks to define, categorise, and regulate individuals and societies by cultivating normativity within specific jurisdictions. Yet, when 'queer' and 'law' are connected through conflicts, we see how they undermine normative/non-normative, static/fluid, queer/non-queer, and doctrinal/critical binaries.
This series invites monographs, short Pivots (25-50k words), and edited collections which engage with these productive conflicts. Books in this series will foreground the possibilities of using legal subjects (litigants, lawyers, judges, remedies, rules, doctrines, judgments)-by holding on the normative-to address questions of liberty, dignity, identity, and equality relevant to socially marginalised communities. Books in the series will also engage with queer subjects (sexual and gender minorities, peripheral intimacies, social failure, anti-foundational critical theories, affects)-by holding on the non-normative-to disrupt and reshape legal parameters of recognition and inclusion.
This series particularly welcomes contributions from early career scholars researching topics relating to: • Queer methods of litigation, advocacy, and adjudication. • Legal and policy interventions aimed at queer lives, bodies, cultures, and communities. • The relationship between pursuits of queer activism, law reform, and policy change. • Queer articulations of legal rights, benefits, entitlements, responsibilities, and jurisdictions. • Queer engagements with legal research, scholarship, teaching, and writing.
Please get in contact with Dr Sen Raj (s.raj@mmu.ac.uk) to discuss book ideas.
Scholars, activists, lawyers, and judges concerned with eliminating violence and discrimination against LGBT people have generated passionate conversations about pursuing law reform to make LGBT injuries, intimacies, and identities visible, while some challenge the ways legal systems marginalise queer minorities. Senthorun Sunil Raj powerfully contributes to these ongoing conversations by using emotion as an analytic frame to reflect on the ways case law seeks to "progress" the intimacies and identities of LGBT people from positions of injury. This book catalogues a range of cases from Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom to unpack how emotion shapes the decriminalisation of homosexuality, hate crime interventions, anti-discrimination measures, refugee protection, and marriage equality. While emotional enactments in pro-LGBT jurisprudence enable new forms of recognition and visibility, they can also work, paradoxically, to cover over queer intimacies and identities. Raj innovatively shows that reading jurisprudence through emotions can make space in law to affirm, rather than disavow, intimacies and identities that queer conventional ideas about "LGBT progress", without having to abandon legal pursuits to protect LGBT people.
This book will be of interest to students and scholars of human rights law, gender and sexuality studies, and socio-legal theory.
In popular consciousness, law is often conceived of as an autonomous system of rules, norms, regulations, and principles. Such a disembodied concept of law tends to divorce sensations or passions from abstract reason. Divorcing law from emotion, however, is futile. From grieving citizens seeking reform to a particular social injustice to heated litigation in courtrooms to calculated judicial decisions, emotion animates the legal system. Emotion is not an unfortunate consequence or effect of an otherwise rational system of law; it is a core feature in how law manifests across times, jurisdictions, institutions, and cultures.
Rather than organise this the study of emotion within specific areas of law, this module invites students to think about emotions – both “good” and “bad” ones – as a way to navigate legal debates across disciplines and jurisdictions.