Category: Law

  • Prepare for take off! – Comic Launch

    It is on the internet, therefore it must be true.  Like little elves, we are busily preparing the launch of our comic and a separate but connected panel discussion on human rights education more broadly.   If you want to know more, click the link and scroll down until you find our event. We’d love to see…

  • Delicious Dolls and Reluctant Brides: Forced Marriage in Nineteenth Century Art

    We can learn a lot about a culture from their art. What do the people value? What stories do they tell? When we answer those questions, we learn a lot about an era. Nineteenth-century portrait artist Auguste Toulmouche was known for his paintings of beautiful, indolent women. In fact, Émile Zola (an author and playwright…

  • Raising the Legal Age of Marriage – Alex Reflects

    “But Mum, I love him!” My sister proclaimed. She was older than me, probably just turned sixteen, and was deeply in love with her first boyfriend (who was her own age and, if memory serves, a sweetheart. He gave me my first copy of The Smashing Pumpkins, though, so I’m aware that I might be…

  • So You Want to Make a Comic 2: How we did it 

    A couple of weeks ago, I came across Alan Moore’s Writing for Comics and Alex put together a handy list resources for comic making. I wish I could say I followed any of the advice of The Great comic writers when I wrote ours.   Instead, and as so often in academia, I made it up…

  • New Publication Alert! 

    Yes, I am reluctantly blowing my own trumpet.   Last year, I wrote a journal article about forced marriage and human rights law. It is still under review. That is the academic publication process for you. Apart from that it takes AGES, it also involves a lot of write-and-delete. Or maybe more write-and-take-out-what-you-have-just-written-because-it-pushes-the-article-over-the-wordlimit-but-save-it-in-another-document-just-in-case. I decided to…

  • A Review (or something) of Team Muhafiz and the Child Raiders

    Of course our comic is not the only educational comic on forced marriage out there. Another example is Team Muhafiz and the Child Raiders by Samar Minallah Khan, Imran Azhar, Babrus Khan, and Rabiya Waheed. It is part of a Pakistani comic book series that aims to contribute to social change. In addition to speaking…

  • Batman and Wife: How to Close Read a Comic

    DC Special Series Vol 1 #15 June, 1978 Source: Batman Reddit Before you begin reading this blog, you may want to take a look at Hannah’s excellent post on this Batman narrative, which explores the legality of the situation that Batman has found himself in. It’s fascinating and enjoyable, and it even includes the law of the…

  • Even Superheroes 

    I have a confession to make: ‘The Killing Joke’ is the only Batman story I have ever read, until now. And the only reason I read another one is because I came across a Reddit post entitled ‘Remember when Batman was forced to marry Thalia and?’ Don’t judge me.  If you are as unfamiliar with…

  • “I do – not”: An Introduction to Forced Marriage 

    Forced marriage is a global problem that does not pass by the UK. The International Labour Organisation (ILO), Walk Free and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimated that, worldwide, at least 22 million people lived in forced marriages in 2021. In 2022, around 300 people asked the UK’s Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) for advice…