Anna Saunders

Twitter: @annajsaunders

Bluesky: @annasaunders

Anna joined the Faculty of Laws in 2021. Her PhD research examines the international law governing the creation and distribution of technology in international society, its relationship to historical and social transformations, and its significance for the contemporary world. The project traces imperial practices, judicial decisions and treaty frameworks governing patent rights in an industrialising world from the mid-nineteenth century through to the present. It explores the relationship between the development of the patent as an international property form and aspects of contemporary international legal thought, and suggests ways to reimagine both the patent form and legal thinking for the climate crisis. Anna鈥檚 wider research interests are in international law and theories of property, the relationship between economic thought and legal interpretation, and the encounters between legal research and histories of capitalism and climate. Her PhD project is supported by an AHRC London Arts and Humanities Partnership Research Studentship and by a Modern Law Review Scholarship. At 果冻影院, she is a member of the Institute for Brand and Innovation Law and the Centre for Law and Environment.

Since 2023, Anna has been Assistant Editor at the London Review of International Law. She is co-convenor (with Jane Holder and Anna Stelle) of the Law Teachers鈥� Programme for 2023鈥�24, and founder and co-chair (with Weronika Chrzanowska) of the Feminist Law Collective. In November 2023, she will be a visiting scholar at the Amsterdam Center for International Law. In 2022鈥�23 she was a Graduate Lecturer teaching in the LLB subject Property I (land law) and supervising LLM and undergraduate research in international law and legal theory. Prior to commencing the PhD, she was a Teaching Fellow at Melbourne Law School teaching in public law and history, and a Senior Program Fellow with the Laureate Program in International Law, where she completed a research project on the law, history and political economy of post-war constitution-making (now published as a lead article in the American Journal of International Law).

In addition to her article in the American Journal of International Law, Anna has published two edited volumes, Revolutions in International Law: The Legacies of 1917 (as co-editor, with Kathryn Greenman, Anne Orford and Ntina Tzouvala) and International Law and the Cold War (as associate editor, with Matthew Craven, Sundhya Pahuja and Gerry Simpson). In 2021, she was a guest editor of a special issue on emerging scholarship in the Journal of Law and Political Economy. Other work has been published in Transnational Legal Theory and as chapters in edited volumes with leading university presses. Anna holds an LLM from Harvard Law School, where she was a Frank Knox Fellow, and a JD and MPhil from the University of Melbourne, where she was an editor-in-chief of the Melbourne Journal of International Law. In 2019鈥�2020, she served as associate to Justice Susan Kenny AM at the Federal Court of Australia, and is qualified as an Australian legal practitioner and an officer of the Supreme Court of Victoria.

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Thesis Title

International Law as Industrial Discipline: Property, Patents and Climate after the Nineteenth Century

Research Supervisor

Dr Megan Donaldson听and Dr听Gracia Mar铆n Dur谩n

Areas of Expertise

History and theory of international law, international law and property, international law and climate, law and technology, law and capitalism, legal theory

Selected publications as of September听2023

Anna Saunders, 鈥楢llende鈥檚 Workshop: Technological Diplomacy and the Stakes of Solidarity鈥� (Natalia Morales Cerda trans) forthcoming on CIL Dialogues.
Anna Saunders, 鈥楥onstitution-Making as a Technique of International Law: Reconsidering the Postwar Inheritance鈥� (2023) 118 American Journal of International Law 251
Anna Saunders, 鈥楲aw after Dominium: Thinking with Martti Koskenniemi on Property, Sovereignty and Transformation鈥�, review essay on To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth: Legal Imagination and International Power, 1300鈥�1870 (Cambridge University Press, 2021) (2023) 13 Transnational Legal Theory 475
Katie Super, Miriam Shestack, Anna Saunders and Kurt Walters, 鈥業ntroduction: The 2021 Law and Political Economy Writing Prize鈥� (2021) 2(1) Journal of Law and Political Economy 23 (as guest editors for the Special Section on Emerging LPE Scholarship)
Kathryn Greenman, Anne Orford, Anna Saunders and Ntina Tzouvala (eds), Revolutions in International Law: The Legacies of 1917 (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
Kathryn Greenman, Anne Orford, Anna Saunders and Ntina Tzouvala, 鈥業nternational Law and Revolution: 1917 and Beyond鈥� in Kathryn Greenman, Anne Orford, Anna Saunders and Ntina Tzouvala (eds), Revolutions in International Law: The Legacies of 1917 (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
Anna Saunders, 鈥樷€淎nimated by the European Spirit鈥�: European Human Rights as Counterrevolutionary Legality鈥� in Kathryn Greenman, Anne Orford, Anna Saunders and Ntina Tzouvala (eds), Revolutions in International Law: The Legacies of 1917 (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
Anna Saunders, Economic Aggression, International Law and the Transformation of Sociological Thought, 1922鈥�1977 (LLM 50-page paper, Harvard University, 2021)
Sundhya Pahuja and Anna Saunders, 鈥楻ival Worlds and the Place of the Corporation in International Law鈥� in Philipp Dann and Jochen von Bernstorff (eds), The Battle for International Law: South鈥揘orth Perspectives on the Decolonization Era (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Matthew Craven, Sundhya Pahuja and Gerry Simpson (eds), with Anna Saunders (assoc ed), International Law and the Cold War (Cambridge University Press, 2019)

Recent or upcoming presentations

Book Panel on Constitutions of Value: Law, Governance and Political Ecology (Isabel Feichtner and Geoff Gordon eds), Workshop on 鈥楥onstitutions of Value: Acumen and Prognoses鈥�, Copenhagen Law School, November 2023 (by invitation)
'After Transfer: Retheorising Technology for the Green Transition', invited presentation, Centre for Law, Regulation and Governance of the Global Economy, Warwick Law School, October 2023
鈥業ndustrial Internationalism: Patent Form and Legal Transformation after the Nineteenth Century鈥�, Max Planck Summer Academy on Legal History, Frankfurt am Main, July 2023
鈥楤eyond Transfer: Technology as Object or Structure in the Law of Decolonisation, 1961鈥�1983鈥�, LPE in Europe Summer Academy, Rotterdam, June 2023
鈥楥e principe sacr茅 de la propri茅t茅鈥�: Patents in the Mixed Courts of Egypt and the Making of Invention in International Law, 1840鈥�1883, 鈥楶atent Futures: A History鈥� Workshop, Mundaneum, April 2023
鈥楲ocating Invention: International Law, Patent Properties and the Corporate Form鈥�, Global Corporations and International Law PhD/ECR Workshop, University of Cambridge, December 2022
鈥楳aking Patents Global: From Rationalism to Competition and the Market State, 1927鈥�1958鈥�, History, Politics, Law: In Conversation 鈥� Doctoral Workshop, 果冻影院, July 2022
鈥楢sking the Public Law Question: Patents as International Property and the Making of the State鈥�, Faculty of Laws PhD End of Year Workshop, 果冻影院, June 2022
鈥楾echnologies of Peace: Enemy Patents, Custodial Functions, and the Interwar Construction of Security鈥�, 13th Annual Workshop of the International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP), University of Gothenburg, June 2022
鈥楽ecuring Invention: Property in Technology and the Form of International Law鈥�, Workshop: Political Economy, History, International Law, Institut de hautes 茅tudes internationales et du d茅veloppement (IHEID), June 2022
Podcast with Anna Saunders, Kathryn Greenman and Anne Orford on Revolutions in International Law: The Legacies of 1917, New Books Network (9 November 2021) newbooksnetwork.com/revolutions-in-international-law

Academic and Professional Memberships

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Institute for Brand and Innovation Law, 果冻影院
Centre for Law and Environment, 果冻影院
果冻影院 Law and Political Economy
Socio-Legal Studies Association, UK
International Economic Law Collective, UK
European Society of International Law
Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law