Doris Buss is a Professor of Law at Carleton University in Canada. Her research centres on international law and human rights, women’s rights, global social movements, and feminist theory. She is currently running a large research project on mining and the law in Africa.

This lecture will look at the current international legal approaches to regulating the mining sector in Africa. It will draw on research in Kenya to explore how policies on investor and worker rights in mining are reconciled, comparing them with the approach taken elsewhere in the African continent. Professors Buss will discuss her ongoing filed research among small scale artisanal miners in Kenya, putting women’s livelihoods at the centre of the analysis. It sketches out some of the social structures that govern how artisanal mining is in fact conducted and shows how these are at odds with presumptions underlying current law and dominant policy prescriptions.

The lecture will be held at the Temple of Peace and is co-hosted with the WCIA and Centre for Law and Society.