Lucy Barnes

I am a lecturer in the Law of Trusts and Land Law at the University of East Anglia. Previously, I taught at Kingston University and the University of Kent at Canterbury in the areas of Trusts, Land Law, Public Law and English Legal Process. I completed my thesis “Performances of Law Under Postmodern Conditions” at the University of Kent in 2009, resulting in the award of my PhD without corrections. I hold an LLB (hons) in law, also from the University of Kent.

I have maintained a critical interest in how law operates in context, and collaborated on a number of projects which explore the effects of law upon the communities in which it operates. This has included activities such as working with academics in property law to compose a response to a Law Commission consultation on cohabitation, and I have delivered papers at themed conferences which explore the effect of policy focus within the law. These papers are as follows:

‘Figurations from Dystopia: J.G. Ballard and Urban Space’, during Open B stream at the Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference, the University of Bristol, September 11^th 2012. 

“Localising Graffiti”, during the ‘Art, Culture, Heritage’ theme at the Socio-legal Studies Association conference in the University of De Montford, 4^th April 2012.

Attended an invite-only British Academy funded workshop ‘Distributing Time and Space’, 07^th November 2011, Kent. Investigating the extent to which any study of co-ops and mutuals is reliant on a particular inter-play between space and time, and investigating alternatives to this model.

‘Laughing all the Way to the Bank(sy): Situating Graffiti in the Built Environment’ at the Society of Legal Scholars Conference, 08^th September 2011, Downing College, Cambridge University.            

‘Individualising the Big Society: We are all in this (for ourselves) together?’ at the Socio-Legal Studies Association conference, 12 – 14^th April 2011, University of Sussex.

‘Access and Privilege: Law’s Intervention into Landlord/Tenant Relationships’, during ‘Housing Privatisation, 30 Years on: Time for a Critical Reappraisal’, 26^th July 2010, University of Leeds.

My research interests lie in postmodern governance strategies and how these are manifest within areas of law.  I have a particular focus on how governance strategies encourage or discourage particular behaviours and uses of space, which I draw together as notions of 'performance'.

My work is largely informed through the work of 'continental' thinkers, who enable me to access law at its limits - where it is least perceptible through traditional legal methods.  In particular, the work of Lyotard, Foucault and Deleuze has enabled me to shape research strategies which provide an alternative perspective of law, through the multiplicity of experiences ratther than the singularity of a posited account.

I have an interest in areas of law that renders these alternative experiences visible.  Thus, I have researched in areas of social housing, anti-social behaviour, and graffiti through diverse research methodologies to provide perspectives on law as it affects vulnerable populations.  In addition, I have researched theoretical concepts of law through the device of 'law and literature'. I am currently completing a project on dystopia and the absence of classic juridical notions of 'law' through the work of JG Ballard.