Professor Anna Grear

Professor of Law

: GrearA1@cardiff.ac.uk
: +44 29208 75467
: Law Building, Room 2.12, Museum Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3AX

: Media commentator
: Available for postgraduate supervision

My work calls on insights from a range of disciplines despite being predominantly located within a combination of critical legal theory and jurisprudence. I have a particular interest in the relationship between human rights and the environment, and in the theme of legal subjectivity, locating these in relation to contemporary globalisation and to a central concern with the implications of the materiality of the living order – including the theme of lived embodiment. I increasingly draw on posthumanist and New Materialist theories in my work and have been reflecting, for some years now, on a renewing juridical imaginary drawing on these sources and inspirations.

I am the Founder and Editor in Chief of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, and Founder and until 2017 also Director of the Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE) – the largest existing international network of leading scholars in the field, activists, policymakers, lawyers and NGOs dedicated to the transformation of thinking concerning the relationship between human rights and the environment.

Date
Type

2022

Grear, A. 2022. Human rights and the environment: a tale of ambivalence and hope. In: Fisher, D. ed. Research Handbook on Fundamental Concepts of Environmental Law, Second Edition., Vol. 2. Research Handbooks in Environmental Law Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 123-140., (10.4337/9781839108327)
Grear, A. 2022. Flat ontology and differentiation: in defence of Bennett’s vital materialism, and some thoughts towards decolonial new materialisms for international law. In: Jones, E. and Aavidsson, M. eds. International Law and Posthuman Theory. Abingdon: Routledge

2021

Grear, A. 2021. Posthuman legalities: new materialism and law beyond the human. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 12, pp. 1-12. (10.4337/jhre.2021.00.00)
Grear, A. 2021. International law, legal anthropocentrism and facing the planetary. In: Megret, F., Natajaran, U. and Chapaux, V. eds. The Handbook of Anthropocentrism and International Law. Abingdon: Routledge
Grear, A. et al. eds. 2021. Posthuman legalities: new materialism and law beyond the human. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

2020

Grear, A. 2020. Legal imaginaries and the Anthropocene: ‘of’ and ‘for’. Law and Critique 31, pp. 351-366. (10.1007/s10978-020-09275-7)
Grear, A. and Bollier, D. eds. 2020. The great awakening: new modes of life amidst capitalist ruins. Brooklyn, NY, USA: Punctum Books. (10.21983/P3.0285.1.00)
Grear, A. 2020. Resisting anthropocene neoliberalism: Towards new materialist commoning?. In: Grear, A. and Bollier, D. eds. The Great Awakening: New Modes of Life Amidst Capitalist Ruins. Brooklyn, NY, USA: Punctum Press, pp. 317-356.
Grear, A. 2020. Introduction: ‘staying with the trouble’*—environmental justice for the Anthropocene–Capitalocene. In: Environmental Justice. International Library of Law and the Environment Series Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing
Grear, A. 2020. Embracing vulnerability: Notes towards human rights for a more-than-human world. In: Bedford, D. and Herring, J. eds. Embracing Vulnerability: The Challenges and Implications for Law. London: Routledge
Grear, A. ed. 2020. Environmental Justice. The International Library of Law and the Environment series. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

2019

Blanco, E. and Grear, A. 2019. Personhood, jurisdiction and injustice: law, colonialities and the global order. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 10(1), pp. 86-117. (10.4337/jhre.2019.01.05)
Grear, A. 2019. Ecological publics: Imagining epistemic openness. In: Faessel, V., Falk, R. and Curtin, M. eds. On Public Imagination: A Political and Ethical Imperative. London and New York: Routledge

2018

Grear, A. 2018. International law, social change and resistance: conversation between Professor Anna Grear (Cardiff) and Professorial Fellow Dianne Otto (Melbourne). Feminist Legal Studies 26(3), pp. 351-363. (10.1007/s10691-018-9393-0)
Grear, A. 2018. Anthropocene “time”?’— a reflection on temporalities in the ‘New Age of the Human’. In: Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, A. ed. Routledge Handbook of Law and Theory. London: Routledge, pp. 297-316., (10.4324/9781315665733-15)
Grear, A. 2018. Kathryn McNeilly, Human rights and radical social transformation: futurity, alterity, power [Review]. Human Rights Quarterly 40(3), pp. 710-716. (10.1353/hrq.2018.0039)
Grear, A. 2018. Human rights and new horizons? thoughts towards a new juridical ontology. Science Technology and Human Values 43(1), pp. 129-145. (10.1177/0162243917736140)

2017

Davis, K., Adelman, S., Grear, A., Iorns Magellenes, C., Kerns, T. and Rajan, S. R. 2017. The declaration on human rights and climate change: a new legal tool for global policy change. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 8(2), pp. 217-253. (10.4337/jhre.2017.02.03)
Grear, A. 2017. Foregrounding vulnerability: materiality’s porous affectability as a methodological platform. In: Philippoloulos-Mihalopoulos, A. and Brookes, V. eds. Handbook of Research Methods in Environmental Law. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar
Grear, A. 2017. ‘Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene’: Re-encountering environmental law and its ‘subject’ with Haraway and New Materialism. In: Kotze, L. ed. Re-Imagining Environmental Law and Governance for the Anthropocene. Oxford: Hart Publishing

2016

Grear, A. 2016. Human rights and the environment: a tale of ambivalence and hope. In: Fisher, D. ed. Research Handbook on Fundamental Concepts of Environmental Law. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 146-167.
Grear, A. and Weston, B. H. eds. 2016. Human rights in the world community: issues and action. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Press.
Grear, A. and Weston, B. 2016. Human rights accountability in domestic courts: corporations and extraterritoriality. In: Grear, A. and Weston, B. eds. Human Rights in the World Community: Issues and Action., Vol. 4. Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 353-366.
Grear, A. 2016. Corporations, human rights, and the age of globalization: another look at the “dark side” in the Twenty-First Century. In: Grear, A. and Weston, B. H. eds. Human Rights in the World Community: Issues and Action., Vol. 4. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Press, pp. 416-426.

2015

Grear, A. 2015. Deconstructing Anthropos: a critical legal reflection on 'Anthropocentric' law and Anthropocene 'humanity'. Law and Critique 26(3), pp. 225-249. (10.1007/s10978-015-9161-0)
Grear, A. 2015. Penelope Simons and Audrey Macklin, The governance gap: extractive industries, human rights and the home state advantage [Book Review]. Human Rights Law Review 15(3), pp. 607-611. (10.1093/hrlr/ngv018)
Grear, A. and Grant, E. 2015. Introduction: thought, law, rights and action in an age of environmental crisis – in search of better future histories. In: Grear, A. and Grant, E. eds. Thought, Law, Rights and Action in an Age of Environmental Crisis. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 1-22., (10.4337/9781784711337.00006)
Grear, A. and Kotze, L. 2015. An invitation to fellow epistemic travellers—towards future worlds in waiting: human rights and the environment in the 21st century. In: Grear, A. and Kotze, L. eds. Research Handbook on Human Rights and the Environment. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 1-6., (10.4337/9781782544432.00005)
Grear, A. and Weston, B. H. 2015. The betrayal of human rights and the urgency of universal corporate accountability: reflections on a post-Kiobel lawscape. Human Rights Law Review 15(1), pp. 21-44. (10.1093/hrlr/ngu044)
Grear, A. 2015. The discourse of “biocultural” rights and the search for new epistemic parameters: moving beyond essentialisms and old certainties in an age of Anthropocene complexity?. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 6(1), pp. 1-6. (10.4337/jhre.2015.01.00)
Grear, A. 2015. Towards new legal futures? In search of renewing foundations. In: Grear, A. and Grant, E. eds. Thought, Law, Rights and Action in an Age of Environmental Crisis 283-313.. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 283-313.
Grear, A. 2015. The closures of legal subjectivity—why examining ‘law’s person’ is critical to an understanding of injustice in an age of climate crisis. In: Grear, A. and Kotze, L. eds. Research Handbook on Human Rights and the Environment. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 79-101.
Grear, A. and Grant, E. eds. 2015. Thought, law, rights and action in the age of environmental crisis. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

2014

Grear, A. 2014. David Bollier, Think like a commoner: a short introduction to the life of the Commons (New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, Canada 2014) 192 pp [Book Review]. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 5(2), pp. 213-219. (10.4337/jhre.2014.03.06)
Grear, A. and Kotze, L. J. eds. 2014. Research handbook on human rights and the environment. Research Handbooks. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Grear, A. 2014. Towards ‘climate justice’? A critical reflection on legal subjectivity and climate injustice: warning signals, patterned hierarchies, directions for future law and policy. Special Edition Journal of Human Rights and the Environment., pp. 103-133. (10.4337/jhre.2014.02.08)
Grear, A. and Gearty, C. eds. 2014. Choosing a future: social and legal aspects of climate change. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. (10.4337/9781784711900)
Grear, A. and Gearty, C. 2014. Choosing a future: the social and legal aspects of climate change. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 5, pp. 1-7. (10.4337/jhre.2014.02.00)
Grear, A. 2014. Series editor’s preface. In: Maloney, M. and Burdon, P. eds. Wild Law - In Practice. Law, Justice and Ecology Abingdon: Routledge, pp. xii-xii.

2013

Grear, A. and Fineman, M. A. 2013. Vulnerability as heuristic: an invitation to critique and reflection. In: Grear, A. and Fineman, M. A. eds. Vulnerabiity: Reflections on a New Ethical Foundation for Law and Politics. Gender in Law,Culture, and Society Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 1-13.
Grear, A. 2013. Human bodies in material space: lived realities, eco-crisis and the search for transformation. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 4(2), pp. 111-115. (10.4337/jhre.2013.02.00)
Grear, A. 2013. Law’s entities: complexity, plasticity and justice. Jurisprudence 4(1), pp. 76-101. (10.5235/20403313.4.1.76)
Grear, A. 2013. Towards a new horizon: in search of a new social and juridical imaginary. Oñati Socio-Legal Series 3(5), pp. 966-990.
Fineman, M. A. and Grear, A. eds. 2013. Vulnerability: reflections on a new ethical foundation for law and politics. Gender in Law, Culture, and Society. Farnham: Ashgate.
Grear, A. 2013. Human rights and the environment: in search of a new relationship [Editor's introduction]. Oñati Socio-Legal Series 3(5), pp. 796-814.
Grear, A. 2013. Vulnerability, advanced global capitalism and co-symptomatic injustice: locating the vulnerable subject. In: Grear, A. and Fineman, M. eds. Vulnerability:Reflections on a New Ethical Foundation for Law and Politics(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013).. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, pp. 41-60.
Grear, A. and Fineman, M. 2013. Introduction. In: Grear, A. and Fineman, M. eds. Vulnerability: Reflections on a New Ethical Foundation for Law and Politics. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, pp. 1-12.

2012

Grear, A. and Morrow, K. 2012. Rights and property paradigms: challenging the dominant construct hegemony. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 3(2), pp. 169-172. (10.4337/jhre.2012.03.00)
Grear, A. 2012. Human rights, property and the search for 'worlds other'. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 3(2), pp. 173-195. (10.4337/jhre.2012.03.01)
Grear, A. 2012. Learning legal reasoning while rejecting the oxymoronic status of feminist judicial rationalities: a view from the law classroom. The Law Teacher 46(3), pp. 239-254. (10.1080/03069400.2012.737251)
Grear, A. ed. 2012. Should trees have standing? 40 years on. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. (10.4337/jhre.2012.02.00)

2011

Grear, A. 2011. Reflections on biodiversity and food supply: from the nano to the macro-political. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 2(2), pp. 131-135. (10.4337/jhre.2011.02.00)
Grear, A. 2011. The vulnerable living order: human rights and the environment in a critical and philosophical perspective. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 2(1), pp. 23-44. (10.4337/jhre.2011.01.02)
Grear, A., Jones, J., Fenton, R. and Stevenson, K. 2011. Gender, sexualities and law: critical engagements. In: Jones, J. et al. eds. Gender, Sexualities and Law. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 1-11.
Jones, J. et al. eds. 2011. Gender, sexualities and law. London: Routledge.
Grear, A. 2011. 'Mind the gap': one dilemma concerning the expansion of legal subjectivity in the age of globalisation. Law, Crime & History 1(1), pp. 1-8.

2010

Grear, A. 2010. Multi-level governance for sustainability: reflections from a fractured discourse. In: Bosselmann, K. and Grear, A. eds. New Zealand and the EU: Contested Futures: Sustainability, Governance and International Human Rights. Europe-New Zealand Research Series Vol. 5.1. Auckland: University of Auckland, pp. 73-141.
Grear, A. 2010. Where discourses meet. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 1(1), pp. 1-6. (10.4337/jhre.2010.01.ed)
Grear, A. 2010. Redirecting human rights: facing the challenge of corporate legal humanity. Global Ethics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

My research has always grappled, in one way or another, with the issues central to how law co-constructs and mediates the world, how law 'populates' the world with persons, systems, strategies and mechanisms, and how these patterns of law's co-construction are related to law's injustices.

This key interest in law's 'world-making' has led me to wide-ranging engagement with a range of questions. My work tends to be 'meta' rather than 'micro' in focus and is transdisciplinary in orientation. I am interested in some of the deeper questions and patterns underlying a range of interlinked phenomena—and this interest leads me into 'conversation' with a wide range of contributors and perspectives. My work, in that sense, is never 'narrowly legal'.

In 2015, I was awarded 100,000 USD from the Open Society Foundation, along with Burns Weston and David Bollier for a future-facing project on 'commons governance' as a complexity-responsive alternative to the state-market pairing. Such initiatives, which are springing up all over the world, fit well with my interest in New Materialist thought, and suggest various alternative ways of organising human common lives, positioning human social structures within a core commitment to partnership with non-human beings and systems.

Re-Imagine the Future

Teaching experience and responsibilities at Cardiff:

LLM LEVEL: Human Rights and Global Justice.

UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL: Legal Foundations; Environmental Law and Justice.

Teaching experience prior to Cardiff:

LLM LEVEL: Theoretical and Institutional Foundations of Human Rights; Intersectionalities: Race, Gender, Sexuality and Law; Legal Theory.

UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL: Civil Liberties; Critical and Legal Reasoning; Legal Process; Legal Method; Jurisprudence; Land Law; International Human Rights Law; Constitutional Law; Administrative Law.

Core outreach activities

Founder and past Director of the Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment: the largest network of international scholars working at the nexus of human rights and the environment; Patrons include Vandana Shiva and Jonathan Porritt; membership list includes many stellar international scholars in the field. The GNHRE hosts annual symposia, and is a sister project to the well-received Journal of Human Rights and the Environment.

Founder and Editor in Chief of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment. The journal was listed in 2019 as being in the top 11% of all law journals internationally (SCOPUS CiteCount Index).

Other selected outreach activities

Co-Organiser: Permanent People's Tribunal International Hearing on Human Rights, Climate Change and Fracking (2018)
Co-Organiser: Deep Dive Workshops on the Commons: France (2016); Bristol, United Kingdom (2018)
Co-founder, Incredible Edible Bristol: an urban food democracy movement (2014)
Co-organiser, GNHRE International Symposium, Spain, 2014
Co-organiser, GNHRE International Symposium, Costa Rica, 2013.
Co-organiser, GNHRE International Symposium, Onati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Spain, 2012.
Co-organiser: The Irigaray International Seminar, Bristol, June 2011 (co-hosting Professor Luce Irigaray).
Co-organiser: ‘Building Economic Recovery on the Backs of the Poor and Vulnerable: America’s Return to Social Darwinism’, Professor Martha Albertson Fineman, Bristol Watershed – part of the Bristol Festival of Ideas. 2011.
Organiser: ‘Vulnerability Revisited’ – a workshop with Professor Martha Albertson Fineman, June 2011, Bristol UWE.
Co-Organiser: ‘An Audience with Irigarary’, Professor Luce Irigaray, February 2011, Bristol Watershed – part of the Bristol Festival of Ideas.
Organiser, ‘When Natural Differences Substitute for Constructed Oppositions: A New World Culture’, Professor Luce Irigaray, Bristol, February 2011.
Organiser: One day roundtable on ‘Vulnerability’ with Professor Martha Albertson Fineman, Bristol UWE (June 2010).
Organiser: ‘The Construction of Law’s Person, Gender and Human Rights’ – A Roundtable Discussion with Professor Ngaire Naffine (University of Adelaide), Bristol UWE (July).

Honours and awards

Shortlisted for IUCN Academy of Environmental Law Senior Scholarship Award, 2018
Nominated for King's Fellowship Visiting Professorship, Uppsala University, Sweden, 2018
Appointed as an Associate Fellow of the New Economy Law Center, Vermont Law School, USA, 2015
Appointed to United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network: Thematic Group Three: Challenges of Social Inclusion, Gender, Inequalities, and Human Rights, 2014
Appointed as Dahrendorf Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics, 2013
Nominated for IUCN Academy of Environmental Law Scholarship Prize, 2012
Awarded International Seminar by International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Onati, Spain (competitive application process), 2011
Awarded Visiting Scholarship, St John's College, Oxford, UK (competitive application process) (6 weeks), 2007

Professional memberships

Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Waikato, New Zealand
Invited Professor, Westminster Centre for Law and Theory, London, United Kingdom
Global Affiliate to the Vulnerability and Human Condition Collaboration, Emory University, USA
Member of the Dahrendorf Network—Dahrendorf Forum (Berlin, Germany)
Associate Fellow of the New Economy Law Centre, Vermont Law School, USA
Member of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network

Academic positions

2015-Present: Professor of Law and Theory, Cardiff Law School, UK and Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Waikato, New Zealand
2013-2015: Reader in Law, Cardiff Law School, UK and Adjunct Associate Professor of Law, University of Waikato, New Zealand
2006-2012: Senior Lecturer in Law, Bristol Law School, Bristol UWE
2002-2006: Senior Lecturer in Law, Oxford Brookes University (Field Chair/Director: LLB Single Honours Field)
2000-2002: Lecturer in Law, Oxford Brooks University, Oxford UK.

Committees and reviewing

Co-Editor in Chief, Journal of Human Rights and the Environment
Series Editor for Routledge: Law, Justice and Ecology
Series Editor for Elgar Publishing: Critical Reflections on Human Rights and the Environment
Editorial Board Member for Counterpress (Law and Critical Theory).
Journal reviewer for, among others, Global Ethics; Feminist Legal Studies; The Feminist Review; Human Rights Review; Journal of Environmental Law; Legal Studies
Editorial Board Member, Asia Pacific Journal of Environmental Law; Posthumanisms; Anthropocenes: Inhuman, Posthuman, Human.

Critical Legal Theory
Posthumanist and New Materialist Legal Theory
Non-Human Rights
Human Rights: Theory; Discourse
Environmental In/Justice

Human rights and environment journal welcomes students to international editorial team

01 December 2022

Global ban on fracking supported by Cardiff environmental scholar

10 December 2021

Professor Anna Grear

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Articles

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Books

Teaching experience and responsibilities at Cardiff:

Teaching experience prior to Cardiff:

Core outreach activities