Professor Margaret Davies of Flinders Law School, Australia will be giving an Open Lecture entitled 'Persons and Property' at the University of Kent on Wednesday 18th January at 6pm. Open to all, the lecture will take place in the Woolf Lecture Theatre on the University's Canterbury Campus.

Currently the Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the Kent Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality and Kent Law School, Professor Davies is an eminent scholar with an international reputation in legal theory, including critical legal thought, feminist jurisprudence and the philosophy of property.

Describing her research in the context of the upcoming lecture, Professor Davies said: 'For nearly twenty years I have been fascinated by cultural and philosophical narratives which connect property to ideas about the person. These connections help us to define the self, to justify ownership, to separate public from private and to organise society. In this lecture I will be talking about some of these connections, but also about what I think is an increasing consciousness of the moral and legal interests of the community and the environment in thinking about property.'

Professor Davies has received three Australian Research Council grants and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and the Australian Academy of Law. Her latest research focuses on the tension between community and individual interests in property.

‘Kent Law School is privileged to be able to host such an eminent scholar, who has made a range of important contributions to legal theory' said Professor Sally Sheldon, Law School Co-Director of Research.  'I am greatly looking forward to learning from the insights which Professor Davies will offer relating to the important legal and philosophical questions addressed in her Leverhulme lecture.’