2026 ALC Graduate Student Workshop
The second annual Asian Law Centre (ALC) Graduate Student Workshop on Asian Law and Legal Studies will take place over two days on 23-24 June 2026 at Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne, Australia.
Changing Asia: Laws and Legal Institutions
The ALC Graduate Student Workshop aims to bring together graduate researchers working on topics in Asian jurisdictions and provide a collegial and safe platform to share their research and receive feedback from peers. The theme for this year’s workshop is ‘Changing Asia: Laws and Legal Institutions’.
The second ALC Graduate Student Workshop encourages participants to share their work, focusing on the theme of ‘Change’ which includes changes seen both contemporarily and historically, and the role of law and legal institutions in such change.
The world in the last few decades has seen rapid geo-political changes, and Asia and its various legal institutions have not been unaffected. Climate change is rising on our heels and is re-defining how we imagine borders, immigration and nationality, and how nations cope with rising temperatures, water scarcity and loss of bio-diversity. The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and its proliferation to the individual user is making it difficult for policy makers to regulate, and yet some see AI’s potential in making legal institutions perform better. The relationship between digitalisation and labour in Asia has been transformed through the gig-economy and fast-fashion manufacturing hubs. Queer and atypical relationships and families have received legal acceptance in some Asian jurisdictions, while other jurisdictions still resist on the basis of religious, cultural and constitutional grounds.
This Workshop will discuss law as both a cause and result of change, its role in creating new social and political norms, while at the same time seeking to preserve many others, and its responses to situations of crisis — from doctrinal, empirical, critical and interdisciplinary perspectives.