RR: EAGER Collaborative Research: Building Dynamic Research Communities in Global Legal Studies

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

Comparative and international legal approaches provide the foundation for future scientific innovation. Complex legal frameworks are increasingly offered as the solution to the most pressing issues of our time. The issues transcend borders, levels of governance, and areas of policy expertise demanding coordination, collaboration, and convergence to create sustainable institutional solutions to these pressing societal needs. This project pilots a new model for collaborative and convergent research communities in law and social sciences. The project aims to form the critical connections, commitments, and institutionalization to ensure a transformative change in how research on comparative and international law is designed and implemented, and how the findings and data from the research are disseminated. To date, lack of transparency, limited accountability, poorly-sustained graduate mentorship, and an absence of a commonly-accepted platform for data sharing have led to a fragmented field and a large number of single-use data projects. In turn, this has hampered the ability to sustain research agendas resolving salient legal questions. The project develops three collaborative components: data infrastructure, Idea Labs, and an Annual Research Workshop. Together, these institutional innovations will ensure the reproducibility, replicability, and generalizability of data in the field of law and social sciences, and they will create a new multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary collaborative team model that is better equipped to embrace the complexity and scope of global legal challenges.