A new Centre of Excellence led by Lancaster University, to improve aspects of safeguarding for vulnerable families in the family justice system, will be officially launched this month.
The CLASS Centre (Centre for Corpus linguistic and Legal Approaches to Safeguarding Studies) is holding its launch event at Lancaster Castle on June 23, opened by the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Professor Edward Simpson.
His Honour Judge Wildblood KC will give a keynote, drawing on his extensive experience as a High Court Judge. His keynote will explain contemporary challenges facing the family justice system, and the importance of strategies to reduce the numbers of families involved with safeguarding processes.
Professor of Linguistics and Law, Lauren Devine, who leads the new centre, was awarded £2.09m from the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) towards this £2.5 million project which applies corpus linguistics - the use of computers to study large language datasets - to contemporary areas of law, safeguarding and the family justice system.
Other speakers include departmental heads from linguistics and law, Professor Vaclav Brezina from the University's CASS Centre and Professor Judith Harwin from the University's Centre for Child and Family Justice Research. The event will be narrated by Professors Karen Broadhurst and Lauren Devine.
You can sign up for this free event by visiting this Eventbrite page.
