25 years of the School of Law
The School of Law at Birkbeck celebrated its 25th anniversary throughout the 2017/18 academic year.
Founded in 1992 as a Department of Law with three members of academic staff, over the last twenty-five years we have become a School comprising the Departments of Law, Department of Criminology, as well as the Institute for Criminal Policy Research. We have four research Centres, 40 members of staff, and an overall student body of over 1,000. The School is proud of being a pioneer in establishing and developing a hub for the field of critical legal studies. While our national and international reputation has been forged through critical legal research, more recently we have gained recognition for critical criminological and activist research, socio-legal scholarship and policy-engaged empirical research. In recognition of this, the last Research Excellence Framework exercise ranked us as being in the top 10 law schools in the UK and in the top 3 in London, while our research environment was judged conducive to producing research of the highest quality.
The School held a number of events reflecting on our history and successes as well as looking forward to the opportunities and challenges facing critical legal and criminological teaching and scholarship in the 21st century. ‘Past, Present, Future Critical Legal Postgraduate Research’, held over two days in May saw us welcome over thirty current and past doctorate students presenting their latest research and reflecting on their time at Birkbeck. On Friday 1 June we launched the Birkbeck School of Law Archive, collated by Dr Piyel Haldar, celebrated by a one-day symposium exploring the relationship between archives and the file in relation to law and institutions.
We extend our utmost thanks to all who joined us to celebrate our first 25 years – here’s to many more to come!