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Cooper

Professor Davina Cooper

Research Professor in Law & Political Theory

Research interests

  • Law

Biography

Davina Cooper is a Research Professor in Law and Political Theory. She is an interdisciplinary scholar, whose work focuses on concepts, transformative politics, state activism, and experimental communities.

Between 2018-22, she directed the ESRC funded research project on the Future of Legal Gender - which explored the implications and stakes of abolishing legal sex and gender status. In October 2022, Davina started work on a two-year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship entitled: "Gender and the Conceptual Imagination", which aims to advance understanding of conceptual prefiguration, as a methodological, empirical and theoretical approach, in relation to gender. 

She is widely published, including her books Feeling like a State: Desire, Denial, and the Recasting of Authority (Duke, 2019); Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces (Duke 2014); Challenging Diversity: Rethinking Equality and the Value of Difference (CUP, 2004); Governing out of Order: Space, Law and the Politics of Belonging (Rivers Oram, 1998); Power in Struggle: Feminism, Sexuality, and the State (OU/ NYU, 1995); and Sexing the City: Lesbian and Gay Politics within the Activist State (Rivers Oram, 1994).

From 2004-2009, she directed the AHRC Research Centre in Law, Gender and Sexuality (based at the universities of Kent, Keele and Westminster); from 2000-2003, she was Research Dean for the Social Science Faculty at Keele.

She has been a specialist advisor to the Education and Employment Parliamentary Select Committee, a magistrate, and a local London councillor. She is a founding editor of the interdisciplinary Routledge book series, Social Justice.

She is an elected Fellow of the British Academy and elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

PhD supervisions

Yes, Davina is accepting PhD supervisions.

Membership of professional bodies

  • SLSA
  • LSA
  • BA (fellow)
  • AcSS (fellow)

Research interests

Davina Cooper’s research over the past 30 years combines two primary interdisciplinary areas. The first concerns conceptual innovation and the methodologies to support new conceptual thinking. Specifically, here, her work explores re-conceptualisations of the state, gender, property, and equality through a diverse range of research methods, including qualitative fieldwork, caselaw, and simulations of state and legislative practice.

Her second area of research addresses radical, utopian, and transgressive forms of state and non-state governance, from everyday utopias to municipal state activism, paying particular attention to governance innovations and conflicts to do with gender, sexuality, and religion.

Davina Cooper's recent published research addresses:

  • how sex and gender are treated in equality law and the possibilities for reimagining sex and gender through equality law 'thoughtways' developed for religion and disability
  • what would abolishing legal sex/ gender status look like, the implications of this move, and its "soft" development through policy and practice
  • the challenge of prefigurative and DIY law reform proposals
  • the social conflict over how to conceptualise sex and gender
  • developing state and non-state innovations that "prefigure" their wider future take-up
  • reimagining what it could mean to be a state as a transformative progressive concept
  • local goverenment boycotts and municipal state activism
  • prefiguring the state
  • simulating state instititions-with-revisions through play

Teaching interests

  • Conceptual research methods
  • Law & utopia
  • Law & political theory
  • Gender, sexuality and the law
  • Advanced public law

PURE profile 

For more information on Professor Cooper's research, visit our research portal.

Research

LGBTQ+ policymaking
LGBTQ+ policymaking in the UK

Establishing an interdisciplinary network of academic, policymaking, and civil society stakeholders to address the policy needs of the UK’s LGBTQ+ population.

Project status: Starting

News

Law School hosts new summer research residence on equality, law and social justice

In June 2023, academics from Britain and across the world participated in The Dickson Poon School of Law’s first summer research residence, which explored the...

Participants listening to someone speak in a seminar

Future of Legal Gender project publishes final report

The public conversation on gender has evolved significantly in recent years. A four-year research project, based at The Dickson Poon School of Law, has...

FLaG 1 -  780x440 dreamstime_14185944-edit

Four King's academics elected as British Academy Fellows

The British Academy has elected four King’s academics as new Fellows

The British Academy has elected four King’s academics as new Fellows

Research suggests that improving gender equality does not require people to have a legal sex

Legal sex status and its reform are at the heart of a growing international conversation spurred by some countries’ moves towards gender-neutral law, the...

images of a 'male' and 'female' stick figure standing side by side in a round, black and white sign

What should gender's future be?

The Future of Legal Gender project (FLaG) is a three-year ESRC-funded project led by Professor Davina Cooper that is investigating the future of legal gender.

Somerset House

Events

04JulProf Sandra Fredman

Breaching the divide: A rights-based approach to economic inequality

Public Lecture by Sandra Fredman, Professor of Law Oxford University

Please note: this event has passed.

20JunPostcards to the future thumbnail image (1)

Postcards to the future: Struggles against anticipatory harm

Public Lecture by Professor Shirin Rai, SOAS

Please note: this event has passed.

24MarFLaG (1)

Abolishing legal sex status: A help or hindrance to gender equality?

Should legal sex and gender status be abolished? What might such a future law look like; and what are its risks?

Please note: this event has passed.

Features

The Challenge of Removing Legal Sex Status

The Future of Legal Gender Project, ESRC funded 2018-2022

FLaG - 1903x558 dreamstime_14185944-edit_2

When it comes to defining gender and sex, politics not truth is at stake

In the past few days, the fight over sex and gender in Britain has once more flared up over two recent decisions. Sex-based rights feminists, who locate...

Symbols Hero

Research

LGBTQ+ policymaking
LGBTQ+ policymaking in the UK

Establishing an interdisciplinary network of academic, policymaking, and civil society stakeholders to address the policy needs of the UK’s LGBTQ+ population.

Project status: Starting

News

Law School hosts new summer research residence on equality, law and social justice

In June 2023, academics from Britain and across the world participated in The Dickson Poon School of Law’s first summer research residence, which explored the...

Participants listening to someone speak in a seminar

Future of Legal Gender project publishes final report

The public conversation on gender has evolved significantly in recent years. A four-year research project, based at The Dickson Poon School of Law, has...

FLaG 1 -  780x440 dreamstime_14185944-edit

Four King's academics elected as British Academy Fellows

The British Academy has elected four King’s academics as new Fellows

The British Academy has elected four King’s academics as new Fellows

Research suggests that improving gender equality does not require people to have a legal sex

Legal sex status and its reform are at the heart of a growing international conversation spurred by some countries’ moves towards gender-neutral law, the...

images of a 'male' and 'female' stick figure standing side by side in a round, black and white sign

What should gender's future be?

The Future of Legal Gender project (FLaG) is a three-year ESRC-funded project led by Professor Davina Cooper that is investigating the future of legal gender.

Somerset House

Events

04JulProf Sandra Fredman

Breaching the divide: A rights-based approach to economic inequality

Public Lecture by Sandra Fredman, Professor of Law Oxford University

Please note: this event has passed.

20JunPostcards to the future thumbnail image (1)

Postcards to the future: Struggles against anticipatory harm

Public Lecture by Professor Shirin Rai, SOAS

Please note: this event has passed.

24MarFLaG (1)

Abolishing legal sex status: A help or hindrance to gender equality?

Should legal sex and gender status be abolished? What might such a future law look like; and what are its risks?

Please note: this event has passed.

Features

The Challenge of Removing Legal Sex Status

The Future of Legal Gender Project, ESRC funded 2018-2022

FLaG - 1903x558 dreamstime_14185944-edit_2

When it comes to defining gender and sex, politics not truth is at stake

In the past few days, the fight over sex and gender in Britain has once more flared up over two recent decisions. Sex-based rights feminists, who locate...

Symbols Hero