Research centres and projects

Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa (ICLA)

ICLA was founded in 2011 at the Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria. Its website details past and ongoing research projects and makes available their publications and data. It also has an African Constitutions section, providing the constitutions of over thirty African states, country reports, information about a number of books on African constitutional law, and the reports of the Stellenbosch Annual Seminar on Constitutionalism in Africa (SASCA).

Decolonial comparative law

Research project based at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg. The website outlines the subject of decolonial comparative law and provides a bibliography of decolonial legal studies and decolonial theory. Details of the project’s events and publications are also available, and there is a mailing list to join. The main page is available in English, French, German, Portuguese or Swahili; most of the remaining content is in English.

Oxford Human Rights Hub

Website of the Oxford Human Rights Hub (OxHRH) which is based in the University of Oxford Faculty of Law. OxHRH aims to bring together academics, practitioners, and policy-makers from across the globe to advance the understanding of human rights and equality law. OxHRH produces reports and policy submissions, organises conferences and lectures and publishes the University of OxHRH Journal. OxHRH also produces the RightsUp podcast which has interviews with human rights experts, academics, lawyers and policy makers and a blog posting on a wide range of human rights issues.

Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research

The Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR) is a research organisation based at Birkbeck, University of London. ICPR focuses on justice issues including policing and the policed, courts and the judicial process and prisons and the use of imprisonment. There is information about current and completed research projects with links to publications. These cover: youth justice, communities, crime and victims of crime, rehabilitation, drugs alcohol and criminal justice and race, ethnicity and gender.

World Prison Brief

Website of World Prison Brief a database providing free access to information on prison systems around the world. The resource is part of the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research’s (Birkbeck, University of London) World Prison Research Programme. Information is arranged by country and includes contact details of the government department responsible for prisons, figures for the prison population, the percentage of female, foreign and juvenile prisoners and prison population trends.

Centre for the Study of European Labour Law

Website of the Centre for the Study of European Labour Law at the University of Catania, set up in 1996 by Massimo D’Antona. The focus of the Centre is European social integration, the labour market and social protection systems. The Centre makes available a Working Papers Collection covering EU social law and policy, labour law and industrial relations. The papers are brought together a series of online volumes, Biblioteca 20 Maggio, which can be browsed or searched back to 2003. The papers are mostly in Italian with some in English.

Bulgarian Institute for Legal Initiatives

Website of the Bulgarian Institute for Legal Initiatives (BILI) an independent policy organisation focused on reform of the judiciary and the establishment of a more transparent, accountable and predictable governance in Bulgaria. Details of current and past projects are given on the site including civic monitoring of public appointments and the Transparent Parliamentary Appointments Initiative. BILI publications are also free to view online. The site can be viewed in Bulgarian and English.

Database-CIL

Aimed at researchers and policy makers, this database is a free public resource continually being updated by the Centre for International Law at the National University of Singapore. The database comprises over 900 ASEAN documents (treaties and soft law documents) and 300 other international law documents, with details of Southeast Asian implementation of key instruments. It can be searched by title, date, key word and treaty status. Each database entry provides documents in both pdf and word formats, as well as an external link, and recommended related instruments.

Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law

The Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law is part of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) and was set up to advance the Rule of Law worldwide. The Bingham Centre’s work covers the following areas: business; citizenship; digital age; justice systems; modern slavery; parliaments and security. The Centre produces reports and discussion papers which are available in full on the site. Details of the Centre’s projects and events are also given along with its work as secretariat for the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on the Rule of Law.  

SHARIAsource Portal

The SHARIAsource portal is a project of the Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School providing access to digitized Islamic legal materials. The Portal includes contemporary primary sources including constitutions, legislation and law reports; historical sources including books and legal treatises and special collections of Islamic legal resources produced in collaboration with institutions or scholars of Islamic law. SHARIAsource can be searched by keyword or advanced search or browsed by geographic region, topic (eg.

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