Workshop on: "Renewing the Theoretical and Methodological Tools of Research on Punishment and Justice: Scope and Limits of Modern Penal Rationality"

Rationale: Conducted in both English and French, this workshop brings together scholars interested in renewing the theoretical and methodological tools used to analyse punishment and justice in contemporary societies. While socio-legal research has extensively documented transformations in criminal law, penal policies, and justice institutions, the framework of modern penal rationality developed by Álvaro Pires (University of Ottawa) remains a major reference point for analysing punishment and justice. The workshop seeks to engage with this framework as an important analytical foundation, examining both its continuing explanatory power and the ways it can be expanded, refined, or complemented in light of contemporary developments, including emerging technologies, new forms of regulation, alternative measures, human rights concerns, and structural violence. By bringing into dialogue scholars working in different national contexts and from both the Global North and the Global South, the workshop aims to foster collective reflection on how existing analytical tools can be reassessed, expanded, or complemented in order to better understand contemporary forms of punishment and contemporary responses to social harms.

Thematic Scope and Structure: The workshop opens with a keynote lecture that invites participants to reflect on the often invisible and lived dimensions of law, providing a common point of departure for discussions throughout the event. Building on these reflections, participants explore diverse empirical and institutional contexts, including the production of criminal law, transformations in justice institutions, alternative measures, accountability mechanisms, informal disciplinary practices, and issues of structural violence and human rights. Structured over two days, it combines paper sessions, a methodological roundtable on photographic elicitation, and collective discussions designed to encourage dialogue across theoretical perspectives and research traditions.

Contribution to Socio-Legal Studies: The workshop contributes to socio-legal studies by critically assessing the continuing relevance of modern penal rationality while exploring complementary analytical frameworks capable of addressing emerging forms of punishment and justice. Through dialogue between perspectives from the Global North and the Global South and across a wide range of empirical settings, it seeks to stimulate theoretical innovation, comparative analysis, new research agendas, and future international collaboration, including the development of a collective publication.

About the Convenors: The workshop is convened by an international team of socio-legal scholars based in Canada, Spain, and Brazil whose research interests focus on punishment, justice, criminal law, public institutions, and socio-legal theory. Their collaboration reflects a shared commitment to fostering international dialogue and advancing theoretical and methodological innovation in the study of punishment and justice.