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Dr Maria Cahill Awarded a Laureate Visiting Fellowship at the University of Melbourne

24 Oct 2018

Dr Maria Cahill will join a multidisciplinary Laureate program entitled “Balancing Diversity and Social Cohesion in Democratic Constitutions” for two months.

Supported by the Kathleen Fitzpatrick Fellowship Scheme and funded by the Australian Research Council, the Laureate program entitled “Balancing Diversity and Social Cohesion in Democratic Constitutions”, brings together leading legal scholars to enhance the capacity of constitutional law.

Designed to enable a number of outstanding female doctoral and early career researchers to visit Melbourne Law School and work with Professor Adrienne Stone’s Laureate Program in Constitutional Law for up to two months, the programme aims to address the need to reconcile the tensions between the recognition of social diversity and the promotion of social cohesion.

This is a particularly pertinent issue as nations grapple with the challenges of highly diverse multi-cultural societies.

UCC School of Law’s Dr Maria Cahill will become part of Professor Stone’s multidisciplinary research team, which includes world-class early career researchers and innovative practitioners, to investigate how constitutions, in their design and in their application, can unify while nurturing the diversity appropriate for a complex, modern society.

Specifically, Dr Cahill’s research will explore, in comparative perspective, the ways in which national constitutions acknowledge and support the existence of social groups.

Dr Cahill’s research aims to problematize the fact that “social groups are rarely given specific protection in national constitutions despite the fact that we know from social capital literature that social groups play an indispensable role in the advancement both of social cohesion and individual happiness”.

The fellowship will commence on 15th July 2019.

School of Law

Scoil an Dlí

Room 1.63, Aras na Laoi, T12 T656

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