LaW Network – Doctoral Conference for PhD students and employees who have recently defended their PhD theses
The project LaW Network – Doctoral Conference launches a partnership between the Universities of Nantes, Birmingham, Florence, Murcia and Kyiv. Under the EUniWell Seed Funding Programme, this partnership takes the form of a cycle of conferences every two years with the first one to be held at the University of Nantes in May 2024. The first conference will focus on critically examining various aspects of the relationship between coercion and well-being according to a multidisciplinary approach. During the Conference, participants will discuss their papers in groups led by a scholar. This will give them feedback in order to finalize their papers for publication after the Conference.
For the purpose of this conference, the concept of coerciveness is used here in a very broad sense referring to constraints and limitations on freedom in order to protect people’s rights through the use of different mechanisms. When it comes to well‑being, although there is no consensus on a single definition, there is a general agreement that subjective well-being entails at least three elements: positive emotions, absence of negative emotions, satisfaction with life. It can be related to economic and social rights. Therefore, it is most commonly used in relation to the environment, health, culture (with conventional law), security (with algorithms) and property. Furthermore, the use of well-being is often preferred in international texts over other concepts such as general happiness, and has a concrete character that can be verified by examining national constitutions.
To this regard, how can we think about the relationship between coercion and well‑being in Europe? Are these two notions always antagonistic? Do they have the same meaning in different legal cultures? With a view to examining these complex relationships, doctrinal, theoretical and empirical approaches are all welcomed. The conference will foster two main tracks: the first will examine the juridical impact of law and well‑being, while the second will be centered in a multidisciplinary analysis of such policies.
All interested PhD students and employees who have recently defended their PhD theses are invited to submit their abstracts (a maximum of 700 words) by 20th of November 2023 on the following website.
