Fairpensions4USS

I am on the Steering Committee for Fairpensions4USS (formerly Ethics for USS), which is a non-profit member organisation advocating ethical investment by the University Superannuation Fund. It is now affiliated with Fairpensions, who campaign across several sectors for similar aims.

ODI ‘Rights in Action’

I am on the Steering Committee for a project coordinated by the Overseas Institute for Development on “International Water Rights in Action”. The Committee will guide and review the findings of a comparative "scoping" survey (desk study and some interviews) of water rights regimes, and rights formalisation "models" being promoted by international policy-makers and adopted by legislators nationally; and advise on detailed in-country research on water rights. The project is in its very early inception.

Manual on the Right to Water

I am part of an Advisory Committee for the development of a policy manual on the right to water, which is being prepared by the Centre on Housing Rights and Eviction, Geneva, in association with the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Water, Sanitation and Health Programme of the World Health Organisation. This non-specialist multi-disciplinary manual is designed to assist governments (including local authorities), international organisations, civil society and the private sector to implement and monitor the right to water. It addresses the specific role each of these sectors can play to implement the right to water, drawing on legal, environmental, scientific and economic sources.

2005, Chaired Public Debate on “The World’s Water: Should it be Privatised?”, Oxford Town Hall, Trade Justice Week, 13 April

2005, “Building Bridges between Regulatory and Citizen Space: Civil Society Contributions to Water Service Delivery Frameworks in Cross-National Perspective”, paper delivered to the City of Johannesburg Conference Poverty Reduction through Better Regulation, Johannesburg, South Africa, 21-23 February

2004, “Unruly Consumers and Emerging Corporate Global Water Welfarism”, paper delivered at the Bristol University Law Faculty Seminar Series, 26 November

2004, “Unruly Consumers and Emerging Corporate Global Water Welfarism”, paper delivered to the African Studies Group, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, 18 November

2004, “Emerging Global Water Welfarism: Access to Water, Transnational Regulation and Unruly Consumers, paper delivered at the Colloquium on Global Administrative Law, Institute for International Law and Justice, New York University Law School, USA 8 March

2004, “The Regulatory Face of the Human Right to Water”, paper delivered at the Conference Good Water Governance for People and Nature: What Roles for Law, Institutions, Science and Finance?, Apex City Quay Hotel, Dundee, Scotland, 29 August - 1 September

2004, “Emerging Global Water Welfarism: Access to Water, Unruly Consumers and Transnational Governance”, paper delivered at Workshop on Consumption, Modernity and the West: Rethinking Narratives of Consumerism, California Institute of Technology, 16-17 April

2004, “Global Water Welfarism”, paper delivered at Socio-Legal Studies Association Annual Meeting, Glasgow, Scotland, 6-9 April

2003 “Global Companies and Local Actors in South African Water Services”, paper delivered at the Global Economic Governance Seminar Series, Department of Politics, University of Oxford, 7 November

2003 “Unruly Consumers: Law, Politics and Regulation in the Struggle to Access Water in South Africa”, paper delivered at University of Massachusetts at Amherst Legal Studies Faculty Seminar, 17 October (and subsequently at University of Westminster Law Faculty Seminar 22 October)

2003 “Law, Consumption and Regulation”, paper presented at Workshop on the Theory of Consumption, ESRC-AHRB Research Programme on Cultures of Consumption, University of Birkbeck, London, 10 October

2003 “Emerging Corporate Global Welfarism in the Water Sector”, paper delivered at Critical Legal Studies Conference, Johannesburg, September 3-5

2003 “A Socio-legal Approach to Socio-economic Rights: Citizenship and the Right to water”, paper delivered at Law Faculty Seminar, Wits University, Johannesburg, South Africa, 27 August 2003

2003 “Access to Water and the Bureaucracy of Privatisation: Emerging Corporate Global Welfarism?”, research presentation as faculty participant in the Law and Society Association Summer Institute on (Studying) Justice in a Changing World, a 4 day workshop aim at enhancing professional identity and methodological capacity in socio-legal studies, held in Berkeley, USA, July 16-20 2003

2003 “The Bitter Significance of Administrative Responsibility: Water and the Regulatory Face of Human Rights”, Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Pittsburgh, USA, 4-8 June

2003 “Water Regulation, Public Health and Global Governance”, lecture delivered at Georgetown Law School, USA, 7 April 2003

2003 “The Regulatory Face of Human Rights: Technocratic and Convivial Accountability”, paper presented at Workshop on Accountability in a Complex World: Conceptualizing Constitutional and Regulatory Efficacy in the Face of Globalization and Privatized Governance, Columbia University, USA, March 15-16

2003 “The Internationalisation of Economic Review of Legislation: Non-Judicial Legalisation?”, paper delivered at Festschrift to honour the work of Martin Shapiro, 6 March, Berkeley, USA

2002 "The Commodification of Water, Social Protest and Cosmopolitan Citizenship”, talk given at Law and Society Program, University of California at Santa Barbara, USA, 7 June

2002 “All Talk and No Action? : Social Constructivism and Discourse in Theories of Regulation”, paper presented at European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop on Theories of Regulation, Oxford, UK, 25-26 May

2002 “Non-Judicial Legality and Regulatory Reform”, paper presented in ‘Regulation’ stream of UK Socio-Legal Studies Association Conference, Aberystwyth, Wales, 2-4 April

2002. “Shifting Global Communities in the Governance of Water”, paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of Working Group on Law, Culture and Humanities, Philadelphia, USA, March 6-7

2002 “Economic Rationality, Non-Judicial Legality and Regulatory Reform", invited seminar given to the Centre for Law and Society, Faculty of Law, Edinburgh University, 31 January

2001 “The Internationalisation of Regulating Government”, paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Budapest, Hungary, July 4-7

2000 "Discourse and Political Ideology", paper given at Symposium on Methodology in Socio-legal Studies, a one-day symposium held in Oxford on 29 September 2000 at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. Participants came from Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the UK

2000.Invitation to participate as one of six speakers at a "Dissertation Colloquium" at the University of California at Berkeley on 15 September 2000, where recent graduates presented their research to a cross-section of UC Berkeley faculty in a one-day colloquium. The title of my talk was "Social Citizenship in the Shadow of Competition".

2000.Invited to be respondent to 'Social Constructionism in Legal Studies' panel at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Miami, May 25-29

1999.Invited to be on 'Author Meets Reader' panel at the LSA meeting to deliver a response to Mariana Valverde's Diseases of the Will: Alchohol and the Dilemmas of Freedom (Cambridge Univ Press 1998)

1999. "Disciplining the State: Strategies of Defence 1947 and 1999 in the American Administrative State", delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Chicago, May 26-30.

1998. Invited Speaker at American Association of University Women, California Branch. Presented the results of dissertation research on regulatory reform in social policy services and utilities in Australia, including lessons to be drawn from the research

1998. "Meta-Regulation in Australia and Competing Models of Regulatory Governance", delivered at Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Snowmass, Colorado, June 2-5.

1997. "The Discourse of Defence in the American Administrative State in 1946 and 1995", delivered at a comparative conference on legal history sponsored by the University of Montpelier Law Department, Montpelier, Oct 24-25.