The Centre for Law at Work coridally invites you to a Law School Seminar Series seminar, (Rights to unite - the contribution of real people using EU derived rights to European Integration?). Please see below for abstracts and bios. 

The working papers can be found at this link - https://rightstounite.eu/research-programme-publications/

Abstract: European integration studies conventionally focus on the relationship between the European Union and its Member States. RIGHTS-TO-UNITE (RTU) shifts this focus from the integration of people’s states to the integration of states' peoples. This paper is informed by the question “Can (EU-derived) rights unite, or are they bound to divide?” It explores rights as mediums through which individuals organize their place in society across all its components, spanning economic, social, and even digital spheres, drawing on literature across law, philosophy, political science, and sociology, among others. We conceptualize rights as inherently interactive, with a right-holder relating to one or multiple duty-holder(s). The lived experience of rights is characterised by complexity of sources, content, and nature. Rights extend beyond legal obligations, shaping culture and informal institutions in ways that can make them even more real than right-claiming through judicial and quasi-judicial institutions. This paper builds on an extensive critical literature review to propose an initial framework of societal integration through rights. It innovates by accounting for the possibility of disintegration through rights, identifying potential points of failure in a rights-based framework for integration. Going beyond traditional public law/private law divides, and accounting for the substantial diversity of economic, social and digital EU-derived rights, this RTU contributes to a new theoretical framework to evaluate successes, failures, and crises of integration through rights on the ground. 

Dagmar's Bio: Dagmar Schiek is a Full Professor of EU Law and Labour Law at University College Dublin's (UCD) Sutherland School of Law, and directs RIGHTS TO UNITE, a project which develops a new socio-legal theory of European integration, funded by an ERC Advanced Grant. She moved to UCD from University College Cork, where she held the Synott Family Chair for EU law and also served as Vice Dean for research for the school of law from 2020. She migrated to the UK in 2007 as a professor of EU Law (University of Leeds - 2007, Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) -2014), and remains an honorary professor at QUB school of law. In September 2011 she was awarded a Jean Monnet ad personam Chair for EU law, having been a professor of European Union Law from 2000 (University Carl von Ossietzky, Oldenburg), coming to this position from a background as comparative labour lawyer and anti-discrimination lawyer (in which capacity she also drafted gender equality laws for the German states of Berlin and Hessen - both with positive action too radical for today and thus revised backwards). She held visiting positions with the University of Maastricht (The Netherlands), London School of Economics (UK), Kiyv Mohyla Academy, School of Law (Ukraine), University of Canterbury (New Zealand), University Viadrina Frankfurt Oder (Germany) & Melbourne University (Australia). A full biography with all 14 past competitive grants and a full list of publications is available on ORCID (0000-0003-3258-8649). 

Audrey's Bio: Audrey is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, on the ERC-funded project RIGHTS TO UNITE lead by Professor Dagmar Schiek. She previously completed a PhD in Political Science at Trinity College Dublin (2024), with dual supervision from the Law Department, and received funding from Trinity's Provost PhD Award and the Irish Research Council . She has worked as a head tutor in International Relations, and as Lecturer on International Courts in both Law and Political Science at Trinity, where she developed new syllabi with a focus on innovative and inclusive teaching and learning methods.  She has received awards for both her research (IALT Matheson Postgraduate Scholarship 2022, Provost Award, IRC funding) and her teaching (TRISS Postgraduate Teaching Award 2022, with nomination for the Trinity-wide teaching award). Audrey holds a Bachelors in Law With Honors and a Diploma in American Law with High Honors (UCA, France), an MSc in International and European Studies with High Honors, (UPPA, France), a PhD in Political Science (TCD, Ireland), and was previously a Visiting Scholar at University of Copenhaguen's iCourts research center in 2023. 

Professor Dagmar Schiek

Postdoctoral Research Fellow Audrey Plan