Collaboration with the European Judicial Training Network (EJTN)

The idea to provide structured exchange opportunities for legal practitioners and anthropologists evolved from a survey conducted amongst judges across Europe who expressed vivid interest in more in-depth discussions on particular diversity-related legal issues. The EJTN (see below) strongly supported the initiative and, as from 2019, provides funding for one-week study visits and training workshops – to be designed and delivered by the Department ‘Law & Anthropology’. The visits offer a forum for in-depth exchange and collaboration between Department researchers and legal practitioners.

To date, no fewer than 15 Department members have been involved in the collaboration with the EJTN. They have helped set up working groups on a particular case or field of law for the training sessions, provided insights from their ethnographic fieldwork, developed the programme for the study visits, or chosen topics and proposed judgments for the casebook. Researchers have found this engagement to be both productive in terms of generating new insights for their own research and enriching as a professional experience beyond a strictly academic context.

As things stand, the plan is to publish, in partnership wiht the EJTN and under the aegis of the European Commission, a casebook with judgments from across EU jurisdictions addressing cultural and religious diversity.

Impressions from the latest study visit can be found here.

More about the EJTN

Formed in 2000, funded by the European Commission, and based in Brussels, the European Judicial Training Network is the principal platform and promoter for the training and exchange of knowledge of the judiciary across the European Union. It represents the interests of more than 120,000 judges, prosecutors, judicial trainers and court staff throughout Europe. It provides training opportunities for legal practitioners and judges to address, among many other issues, questions concerning cultural diversity and its accommodation in law. The vision of the EJTN is to help foster a common legal and judicial European culture. For more inforamtion, see www.ejtn.eu