Temporality and Coloniality: Public Lecture by Prof. Philipp Dann

Date: Thursday 16th January 2025

Time: Pre-event tea reception at 4.15 pm; Public lecture starts at 4.30pm

Venue: Room 2.1, Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London, 67 - 69 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3JB

Title: Temporality and Coloniality

Discussions about coloniality and law abound. Yet one dimension that has received less attention in legal scholarship and more so in other disciplines is the role of time: how understandings of time shape our world and exercise power over us. In this lecture, Professor Philipp Dann will explore how the contemporary conception of time is unsettling and challenging our understanding of the entanglement with colonialism. The lecture will connect global legal history to the pressing current concerns like climate change. It will show how today’s debates reflect a profound shift in our conception of time and the grown influence of Southern thought in these conversations.

Bio of speaker: Professor Philipp Dann holds the Chair in Public and Comparative Law at Humboldt University Berlin, where he is serving as the Dean since October 2024. His research focuses on the role of law in the encounter and entanglement between South and North – in international, comparative and European law, in legal theory and legal history. He has published three monographs, ten edited volumes and is the editor-in-chief of the quarterly journal “World Comparative Law”. He is a co-founder of the ‘Law and Development Research Network’, a co-chair of the ICON chapter Germany and a principal investigator at research clusters ‘Contestations of the Liberal Script’ and ‘Varieties of Constitutionalism’.