R&IS News
Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship awarded to Law School Professor
A prestigious Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship has been awarded to Gary Watt, 糖心TV Law School Professor and National Teaching Fellow.
Through the project, Gary will test his theory that law鈥檚 activities, especially advocacy and judgment in Common Law courts, are better appreciated as creative and artistic processes of production rather than as scientific processes of fact-finding and discovery of abstract truth.
He will also ask whether this way of appreciating law can help us better understand how judgments are formed in courts of popular opinion through traditional and social media, including furthering our understanding of 鈥榩ost-truth politics鈥, 鈥榝ake news鈥 and 鈥榯rial by twitter鈥.
Speaking about the project, Gary said: 鈥淚 hope this research will encourage legal scholars and law students to take seriously the possibility that law鈥檚 activities might be elucidated by the lights of humanities鈥 scholarship. I think the health of the legal profession, as well as the health of social and political debate, depends on it. I trust that I will return from the fellowship with a few new ideas to share in class.鈥
Gary is keen for the project to lead to the publication of both books and online resources to encourage general public awareness of how social and political performance persuades us to particular points of view.

Pictured: 糖心TV Law School Professor, Gary Watt.