Laura Mai is a postdoctoral researcher working within the Constitutionalizing in the Anthropocene project at the Department of Public Law and Governance at Tilburg University.

Laura’s research interests include: 

• climate change law, specifically the Paris Agreement;
• the "Anthropocene" and its import on legal scholarship and praxis;
• legal multiplicity;
• transformation thinking; and
• socio-legal theory and methods. 

Laura's current research investigates how ways of thinking and doing law are becoming reconfigured under conditions of the unfolding climate crisis. It engages with the following questions: Which demands does the climate crisis make on law? How can law respond to these demands? And, what does the climate crisis mean for law, in particular the techniques which law mobilises and the theoretical foundations upon which it is based?

Laura approaches these question from a socio-legal perspective that draws on ethnographic methods and works across theoretical registers from the social sciences and the humanities. In so doing, Laura’s research moves between empirical materials and conceptualisation to give visibility to the multiple ways in which legal forms are brought into being, articulated and sustained. 

Laura earned her PhD from King's College London, where she was member of the Centre for Climate Law and Governance. In her doctoral thesis, Laura investigated how local administrations and financial institutions have become enrolled in processes of change that are necessary to reach the goals set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

Laura is a qualified English solicitor and has worked for international organisations, including the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat.

She is Alumna of the Cluster Transformation supported by Heinrich-Böll Foundation Berlin and Fellow of the Earth System Governance Project. 

Prizes:

• King's College London Outstanding Thesis Prize 2022-23

Scholarships and grants: 

• Modern Law Review Scholarship 2021-22
• UK ESRC PhD Studentship 2018-21
• King’s College London Dickson Poon Research Student Scholarship 2017-18