Livia Holden

Field of specialization, studies, work experience:

Livia Holden  (PhD – School of Oriental and African Studies University of London) leads the European Research Council’s funded project Cultural Expertise in Europe: What is it useful for? (EURO-EXPERT) and a spin out project funded by Global Challenges Research Funds, UK Gender Sensitisation for Judicial Education in Pakistan and Indonesia.

She is Director of Research at the Centre of History and Anthropology of Law (CHAD) Paris Nanterre and tenured full professor at the University of Padua (on leave). She regularly provides expert opinions for cases pertaining to immigration law, family law, and criminal law in the United Kingdom, United States and the Netherlands.

Description of prior teaching/training activities:

Prior to Paris Nanterre she has been Senior Research at the University of Oxford and SCR Member and College Advisor at St Antony’s College; Dean of the Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty and Professor of Anthropology at the Karakoram International University; Professor of Anthropology at Lahore University of Management Sciences; Lecturer of International Human Rights and Research Fellow at  the Socio-Legal Research Centre at Griffith University; Research Fellow at Freie University; and Visiting Professor at Humboldt University Berlin and INALCO Paris.  

She has been 2015/16 Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Nantes and 2016 Social Sciences Awardee by the Pakistan Inter-University Consortium for the Promotion of Social Sciences. 

She holds affiliations with the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California Berkeley and Otago University. 

Additional information (such as publications, awards, link, etc):

Among her most significant publications see: Hindu Divorce (Ashgate 2008 and Routldge 2013), Cultural Expertise and Litigation (Routledge 2011 and 2013), Cultural Expertise and Socio-Legal Studies, Special issue for Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, (Emerald 2019). 

Among her recent publications see also: A Woman in Academia … and what about the children? (Routledge 2018); Women Judges in Pakistan (International Journal of the Legal Profession 2018); Law, Culture and Governance in Hunza, in NAVEIÑ REET: Nordic Journal of Law & Social Research no. 8, 2018; Law, Governance, and Culture in Gilgit Baltistan, special issue for the Journal of South Asian History and Culture (2019), Cultural Expertise: An emergent concept and evolving practices (2020), MDPI, and Cultural Expertise and History, Forum for the Law and History Review Cambridge (2020).

Among her co-authored documentary films with Marius Holden see: Lady Judges of Pakistan (2013), The Paper Monster (2002), Doing Nothing Successfully (2003) and Runaway Wives (2000).