Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law

We are happy to announce Cristina S. Martinez as a member of the faculty of the OSI 2022! Cristina teaches in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa; she holds a PhD in Art History and Law from Birkbeck College, University of London, and completed a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto.

Cristina participated in OSI in 2014. Since then, she has been a regular member of the OSI faculty, joining us year after year in Osnabrück. Her work focuses on art and visual culture from the eighteenth century to the present, and she is particularly interested in graphic satire, the history of copyright law and the use of appropriation strategies in modern and contemporary art. She has presented her work at the Paul Mellon Centre for Study in British Art, Yale Law School’s library, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow, and before the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (VLA) in New York. She has also been invited to present her research at conferences elsewhere in France, the UK, Italy, Switzerland and Australia. Cristina will convene a workshop with Nora Slonimsky on questions of intellectual property, copyright and cultural production.

Cristina is currently completing her manuscript Art, Law and Order: The Legal Life of Artists in Eighteenth-century Britain which is to be published by Manchester University Press, and is co-editor for the forthcoming collection Female Printmakers, Printsellers and Publishers in the Eighteenth Century: The Imprint of Women in Graphic Media, 1735-1830 (under contract with Cambridge University Press). She received the prestigious Association of Print Scholars Publication Grant in recognition of this project. Continue Reading »

Since 2009, the OSI has successfully encouraged and promoted the interdisciplinary study and research of the interrelations between law and culture, based on the idea that the extended cultural study of the law will foster profitable scholarly exchange and dialogue between legal studies and the humanities. We are committed more than ever to build on and continue these efforts, especially in the face of the current challenges to democratic and open societies.

The Institute will offer a combination of thematic workshop sessions, small group seminars and a final conference for up to 20 international participants (doctoral, post-doctoral and advanced M.A. – see below for eligibility). The introductory workshop will address the range and potential of interdisciplinary studies and approaches in the field of law and the humanities. The remaining thematic sessions and small group seminars will focus on key issues and debates in current cultural legal studies which touch on questions of property, ownership, appropriation etc

The main objective of the OSI is to encourage scholarly exchange across disciplines and the critical debate of current research projects as well as work in progress. Participants will have the opportunity to present and discuss their own work both within the larger group and in individual sessions with members of the OSI faculty. The program will be concluded with a two day conference on the topic of the institute with invited speakers and panel sessions.