VHC Initiative Digest

2026 | August

Professor Fineman featured in Emory Law Insights Magazine


An excerpt from Martha Albertson Fineman’s recent book, Vulnerability Theory and The Trinity Lectures: Institutionalizing the Individual (Bristol University Press 2025), was featured in the Emory Law Insights 2026 Summer Edition. The excerpt is available here.


Professor Fineman's book is based on a series of lectures given at Trinity College, Dublin in 2022. In the Trinity Lectures, Fineman presents an alternative to both a social contract and a human rights paradigm for thinking about state responsibility. Lecture recordings are available here and the recently published book is available here.

Oral History Project: Mapping the Impact of the FLT Project 


The Oral History Project maps the impact of the Feminism and Legal Theory Project over the past 40+ years. This three-year effort involves interviews of feminist legal scholars, historians, academics, and lawyers who have engaged with the FLT Project.


Participants discuss the influence that the project had on them, the connections they made, how it impacted their career, and their vision for the Project going forward. Interviewees include Patricia Williams, June Carbone, Kathryn Abrams, Dorothy Roberts and many more. Our 2024 and 2025 interviews are available here.

Vulnerability Theory and Climate Displacement

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Atieno Mboya Samandari, Postdoctoral Fellow of the VHC, will present a lecture on vulnerability theory on November 10, 2026. The lecture will be part of a seminar series on “Environmentally Displaced Persons,” which was created by a collaboration between Brazillian universities Unisantos and Universidade de Passo Fundo. 

Critical Perspectives on Welfare and Care Institutions

Professor Margunn Bjørnholt is organizing the PhD course, Critical Perspectives on Welfare and Care Institutions, at VID Specialized University, Oslo this Fall. Professor Martha Albertson Fineman will introduce vulnerability theory to the course participants in September. For more information on the course, click here.

Voices in Vulnerability

Voices in Vulnerability is the official podcast of the VHC/FLT Projects at Emory Law. The podcast features a wide range of scholars whose work has used and shaped vulnerability theory in the legal world and beyond. The podcasts provide an accessible method of learning about the various applications of the theory.  In our latest episode, independent scholar, Melissa Cosgrove, discusses vulnerability theory and how it influences her own work in care ethics. Listen to the interview titled "Rupture, Repair, and Care," here.

 

Vulnerability and the Organisation of Academic Labour by Graham Ferris and Martha Albertson Fineman

“This volume uses vulnerability theory to explore how the organisation of the teaching and research activities of universities impact the resilience of academics and also how these activities themselves are impacted by contemporary developments in universities and educational policy.


The starting point of enquiry is that neither academics nor universities are invulnerable, and that urgent attention is needed to reverse developments that undermine their resilience. The contributions focus on universities in the US and UK, legal education in the UK, criminal justice in the UK, Brazilian legal education, research in deprived communities, and the ethics of medical professionals.”


Read more about Vulnerability and the Organisation of Academic Labour (Routledge 2025), edited by Martha Albertson Fineman and Graham Ferris, using this link.

 
Facebook  X