This research group has been founded by members of Kent Law School and is affiliated to the University's Centre for Critical Thought.
Bearing the name of the muse of history, Clio, it supports scholarship that promotes critical exchange between law and history. Although history has consistently formed and informed approaches to law, in much of contemporary critical legal studies this bond of engagement between the two remains largely unexplored. The language of history and that of law emerge as if alien to one another. In seeking to foster links between the two, however, Clio is neither interested in providing for a better or a more accurate legal history, nor offering correctives to the historical development of legal systems, theories and doctrines. Rather, the objective is to draw upon the critical possibilities that history and historiography hold for the law. To this purpose, Clio embraces legal research, which whether orientated towards the humanities or the social sciences, draws in particular upon tropes of history writing rooted in continental theory and philosophy.