On 29–30 August 2022, CEPRI (Center for Private Governance) hosted the SAPIENS Network’s Legal Bootcamp at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen.
Background
SAPIENS is built on transdisciplinary research. Every Early Stage Researcher (ESR) in the network develops a thesis that spans more than one research field, guided by supervisors who themselves come from different disciplines. That breadth is one of the programme’s defining strengths — but it also carries a particular challenge. To produce work that is rigorous, each PhD must still firmly master the methods, conventions, and craft of their leading discipline, even as they reach across others.
For the ESRs whose leading discipline is law, this meant building depth and confidence in legal research specifically. To address that need, SAPIENS Steering Committee member Associate Professor Marta Andhov designed and organised a dedicated PhD development bootcamp, taking on a supervisory and mentoring role for the network’s legal PhDs throughout the process.
Purpose and objective
The bootcamp’s goal — as the name suggests — was to deliver a short, intensive, and rigorous course of training in PhD legal research. Its central aim was to give each legal ESR a long-form opportunity to present their thesis and to be challenged and supported by leading senior legal scholars, so that they could sharpen the disciplinary foundations of their projects early in their doctoral journey.
How it worked
Ahead of the event, each legal ESR submitted a written draft of their first thesis chapter together with a summary of the literature review conducted on their topic. Each ESR then received detailed written feedback from two senior legal scholars from the University of Copenhagen.
Building on this, every ESR was given a substantial, long-form slot to present their thesis — 45 minutes each — followed by a full hour of in-depth oral feedback from at least three senior scholars. This format gave the PhDs something rarely available in the early stages of doctoral work: the time and expert attention to think through their research design, argumentation, and methodology in real depth.
With thanks
The ESRs and the SAPIENS Network would like to thank the scholars who generously volunteered their time and offered feedback and advice on the ESRs’ research projects.
From CEPRI: Alexandra Andhov, Sylvie Cécile Cavaleri, Michal Kania, Maria Edith Lindholm Gausdal, Marta Andhov, and Sorcha MacLeod.
As well as Catherine Jacqueson, Carina Risvig Hamer, and Helen Yu.
The ESRs agreed that the bootcamp was a fantastic and enriching experience for both their thesis progress and their wider academic careers. Here are their main takeaways:
This Bootcamp was a challenge, and we definitely won it. Having already researched for one year our specific topics gave us the foundation and the knowledge we need to start the hard work. Writing constantly is the key to improving our writing skills, becoming clearer, and refining our thinking. Personal takeaway: the Ph.D. thesis is your work, your product and you don’t have to be shy and try to do it. Just do it! Take the reader by the hand and show them where you go.
The Legal Bootcamp in Copenhagen gave us a fresh pair of eyes – those of legal scholars from outside our Network. It was the perfect occasion to test our arguments through exchanges with experts in our field. We were reminded that sometimes less is more and that asking the right legal questions will improve our reasoning. Finally, both the topics and the discussions reminded each of us why we love research.
My main takeaway from this Legal Bootcamp is when it comes to feedback, the more the merrier! The ability to get the opinion of scholars outside of the SAPIENS Network who are experts in different areas was extremely helpful. What definitely made an impact on me from our Bootcamp is that law is a science but definitely not an exact one. There are no right and wrong answers to every question, the key is to build on the existing knowledge and to give reasons for your contribution.
I now understand more clearly that our thesis is not the end point but rather the starting point, so it is not expected to provide answers to all questions. We need to find a balance between being ambitious and overly ambitious, and in creating such balance there is a need to take decisions on what we want to cover and why. Finally, we must be able to explain and defend our projects with arguments based on compelling evidence and literature work, and it has to be performed in such a way that is clear to any other scholar, even when they come from different fields than ours.
During this Legal Bootcamp, the commentators gave us valuable advice, mainly about research questions and methodology. Firstly, when we design research questions, always ask why to do something before how to do something. Also, a strong reason is necessary to justify the comparison when we decide to do a comparative legal study. Do not compare just to compare. Last but not least, always be careful about a bold claim in the thesis if there is no reference to it.
What I “bring home” from this legal bootcamp is both soft and hard skills. It is important to face honest feedback and learn how to take it professionally. To balance humility with confidence in your capabilities. I understood that certain empirical methods might be useful to built up your research on more solid foundations, but do not necessarily need to be formally embedded in your methodologies.
Among the main takeaways were the importance of narrowing down the research topic because ‘it’s always easier to add than to take out’ and clearly explaining the reasons and objectives for each methodological choice. Some good advice for the thesis structure included aligning it with the research questions and attempting to replace descriptive titles with more questioning ones.
In the picture, in order Xinyue Xue, Federica Muscaritoli, Associate Professor Marta Andhov, Laura Trevieno Lozano, Aura Iurascu, Ezgi Uysal, Chiara Falvo.
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