Professor David Gurnham

Research interests

• Gurnham's research and teaching reflect a primary interest in interdisciplinary approaches to law, through humanities and the arts. 

Current research

Gurnham's current research focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to law, marginalisation and movement. Related outputs recently published/in-press and in progress include:

Gurnham, D. 'Walls and Bridges: Framing Lockdown through Metaphors of Imprisonment and Fantasies of Escape', a chapter conribution to Carl Stychin (ed.) Law, Humanities and the COVID Crisis (University of London Press, 2022);

David Gurnham (2022) “Our Country Is a Freedom-Loving Country”: The Spreading Virus as Metaphor for “People on the Move”, Metaphor and Symbol, 37:2, 140-151, DOI: 10.1080/10926488.2021.1954858.

David Gurnham and Haris Psarras, 'Psychoanalysis and Language', an invited contribution to Spoo, B. (ed) 'Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law & Literature.

Gurnham’s recent and current collaborative projects include, for example:

Marginalisation in Law, Policy and Society – a guest-edited special issue of the International Journal of Law in Context (vol. 18(1), 2022), including the essay Introduction: Marginalisation in Law, Policy and Society, pp.1-9;

Law and Humanities Roundtable 2022: Time and Temporalities, July 7, 2022, a hybrid research workshop featuring nine paper presentations, hosted from Southampton Law School, co-chaired by Gurnham, with Dr Stephanie Jones (Soton, Dept of English), Prof Gary Watt (Warwick) and Dr Sophie Doherty (Open University);

Legal Masterplots: a way forward for socio-legal studies? – research workshops at Durham and Southampton Law Schools in Autumn-Winter 2022, with Dr Chris Bevan (Durham);

A Law, Humanities and the Arts network, with Dr Haris Psarras (Soton), a new project to be developed during Autumn 2022-4.

Research projects