Overview - Research
With a primary focus on excellent empirical studies of law in context, based on participatory methodologies and collaborative partnerships, our work at CLS reflects a continuing commitment to sound research, underpinning evidence-based advocacy on critical legal and social issues. Through research that is relevant to Africa we seek to understand how people conceive of law, relate to law, rely on law and to explicate the forces shaping legal institutions in South Africa and on the continent.
Our research is rigorous, action-oriented, trans-disciplinary, participatory and pragmatic in its methodologies, attendant to different forms and loci of knowledge.
CLS’s research programme not only provides members with the skills to undertake rigorous empirical projects, but also engenders an interdisciplinary view on Afropolitan problems, values and develops knowledge and theory that is uniquely from the global South, and is developed in the South for the South.