Recently, GLaD Researcher Dr Sean Mulcahy was appointed as a Visiting Research Fellow in Law at the School of Law, Politics, and Sociology at the University of Sussex, working with Dr Maria Federica Moscati on a dance, performance and law project.
Dr Moscati is an advocate, mediator, and former professional dancer who designed and launched an interdisciplinary learning initiative on Dance in Law, Politics, and Society at the University of Sussex.
During his fellowship, Sean presented a seminar entitled ‘Are we human or are we dancer?: Sex, drugs, and bodies of law’. The seminar drew from our research project on post-human rights approaches to drug law and a joint article for the ‘After Rights? Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics’special issue of the International Journal of Human Rights, co-edited by Prof Louiza Odysseos and Dr Bal Sokhi-Bulley at the University of Sussex, the latter of whom chaired the seminar.
Dr Moscati acted as discussant for the seminar and the discussion explored the intersections of dance and human rights law, building on her research and practice and our previous research on choreography and human rights law regarding drugs.
Dr Moscati invited us to look at different styles of dance as they can teach different things and answer different questions. She also pointed to how dance, including and especially her own area of expertise in classical ballet, balances control and uncontrol and promotes balance and harmony, especially with opposing forces, and that dancers exercise control to free themselves. She argued that dance resuscitates the body.
Dr Moscati also pointed to how dance creates a bridge between the individual and the group, and that dance and law are both forms of socialisation – to which we would argue drugs are too, particularly given research suggests that people can create communities through drug use and that both drug use and harm reduction strategies, particularly among young people, are linked to socialisation.
During the fellowship, Sean also conducted an interview with Dr Moscati about the links between dance and law, which you can listen to here, and the two will be jointly convening a topic on dance/law, with Dr Lucy Finchett-Maddock at Bangor University, at the 2025 Socio-Legal Studies Association Annual Conference at the University of Liverpool.
Sean’s seminar is currently being developed into article and we will share further details on its publication in due course. We are grateful to the University of Sussex for facilitating this Visiting Research Fellowship.