Dr Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa

Profile

Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa is a Senior Lecturer in Law and Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary University of London. Dr Alvarez-Nakagawa’s research interests range from the globalisation of Western legal forms and the colonial history of international law to emerging trends in human rights and environmental law, including transitional justice in South America and the growing recognition of legal personhood and rights for non-human beings. His work combines insights from philosophy, critical theory, anthropology, and jurisprudence to explore these issues from an interdisciplinary and critical perspective.

Dr Alvarez-Nakagawa is currently working on a new project exploring how different approaches to political ontology shed light on social, political, legal, and economic transformations in the context of climate change and automation. The research aims to recover ‘critique’ in its most original form by examining the ontological presuppositions and necessary ‘conditions of existence’ underlying specific discursive and material practices. It starts with the premise that legal theory requires greater critical self-awareness of the ontological commitments it makes when addressing concepts such as rights, freedom, equality, and justice. Consequently, the project focuses on how ontological frameworks shape the emergence of legal forms—law and political ontology—while also considering law as a lens through which people apprehend the world—law as political ontology.

Before joining QMUL as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in 2021, Dr Alvarez-Nakagawa was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET/Argentina) at the Gino Germani Research Institute, University of Buenos Aires, and a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. He has been a Global Lecturer at New York University (NYU), Florence, an Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a Teaching Assistant at the University of Buenos Aires, where he also served as a Research Fellow at the Ambrosio L. Gioja Research Institute. He has taught various subjects, including jurisprudence, legal theory, socio-legal studies, human rights, criminal law, and international law.

Dr Alvarez-Nakagawa has held visiting positions at the University of Barcelona and the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt. He has received numerous awards including the UK Foreign Commonwealth Office Chevening Scholarship, the Ronnie Warrington Scholarship, the Max Planck Institute Dialogue Scholarship, the Max Weber Fellowship, the Walter Benjamin Award for Young Researchers 2020, and the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship.

He is the founding Co-director of the Forum on Decentering the Human, Co-director of the Queen Mary Centre for International Law (CeILa), and founding Co-director of the Group of Critical Studies in Politics, Law, and Society (PoDeS). Dr Alvarez-Nakagawa is a qualified lawyer in Argentina and has litigated criminal law and human rights cases in both local and international settings.

Undergraduate Teaching

• LAW4014 Law in Context

Postgraduate Teaching

PhD Research Methods and Process Seminars

Research

Research interests

Dr Alvarez-Nakagawa’s work draws insights from critical legal theory, political ontology, postcolonial studies, legal history, legal anthropology, and law and humanities. His current research interests are:

• History of Western legal forms, the colonial origins of international law, the Spanish contribution to international law, globalisation of Western law
• Human rights and imperialism, the subject of rights, non-human rights (animal rights, rights of nature and machine rights), the critique of rights
• Political ontologies and cosmopolitics, environmental jurisprudence, political ecology
• The relationship between law, magic, religion, rituals, myth, and performativity
• Poverty and human rights, socio-economic rights, housing rights
• Transitional justice, international criminal law, abolitionism
• Radical and transformative lawyering, critical legal pedagogies

Dr Alvarez-Nakagawa is currently working on his book, Cannibal Laws. The Juridical Forms of Conquest and the Rise of the One-World World. He is also editing a volume for the Proceedings of the British Academy Series at Oxford University Press, titled The Non-Human Turn in the Law.

Examples of research funding:

‘Non-Human Rights. New Legal Persons in Posthuman Times’ – funded by the British Academy

This interdisciplinary research project explores a seemingly fundamental shift in our understanding of rights, sparked by the growing recognition of personhood and legal rights for non-human entities such as animals, rivers, mountains, rainforests, and even machines. As it explores this emerging trend, the project critically examines both the potential and limitations of non-human rights in addressing two of the most pressing challenges of the 21st century: rapid technological advancement and the accelerating degradation of the environment. Framing this development within the broader ‘non-human’ and ontological turn in the humanities and social sciences, the project investigates the generative and ontogenic power of law and envisions a new ‘cosmopolitics’—one that reimagines human and non-human relationships, pushing beyond traditional anthropocentric and liberal political structures.

Supported by the British Academy, this three-year project employs a range of qualitative research methods, including historical analysis and comparative case studies, to provide fresh insights into the evolving landscape of legal rights. Focusing on the ‘non-human turn in the law,’ the project addresses a critical gap in existing scholarship by examining how the move towards ‘decentring the human’ is shaping law’s response to mounting ecological and technological pressures.

Publications

Edited Books

• The Non-Human Turn in the Law, Proceedings British Academy Series & Oxford University Press (in progress).
• Rights, Resistance and Critique (with Wall, Illan Rua), Routledge (in progress).
• Non-Human Rights: Critical Perspectives (with Douzinas, Costas), Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, 2024. ISBN 9781802208511.
• Los Juicios por crímenes de lesa humanidad (co-editor with Anitua, Gabriel and Gaitan, Mariano), Didot, Buenos Aires, 2014. ISBN 978-987-3620-05-8.

Articles and chapters

• “Who is the Subject of (Non)Human Rights?”. Alvarez-Nakagawa, A. and Douzinas, C., Non-Human Rights: Critical Perspectives, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, 2024.
• “A Critical Introduction to Non-Human Rights”. Alvarez-Nakagawa, A. and Douzinas, C., Non-Human Rights: Critical Perspectives, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, 2024.
• “Law’s Numbers”. Boundary 2. An International Journal of Literature and Culture, Vol. 50, Issue 4. Duke University Press, Durham. ISSN 0190-3659.
• “Performing Conquest – The Spanish Juridical Forms in the Americas”. Obregón, L., Betancur-Restrepo, L., Amaya-Castro, J.M. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of International Law and the Americas, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• “Rituals of (Dis)possession. Appropriation and Performativity in the Early Modern Law of Nations” London Review of International Law, Vol. 10, Issue 1. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2022. ISSN 2050-6333. 
• “Repensar el abolicionismo penal en la Argentina. Tácticas y estrategias” (with Anitua, G.) Revista Delito y Sociedad, Vol. 52, Instituto Gino Germani, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, 2021. ISSN 0328-0101.
• “Mestizo Penal Abolitionism” (co-author with Anitua, Gabriel). Coyle Michael J. and Scott, David, The Routledge International Handbook of Penal Abolitionism, London: Routledge, 2020. ISBN 9781138354098.
• “La voz de los vencidos. Justicia y experiencia colonial en Walter Benjamin” Revista Direito e Praxis, Vol. 11, Num. 3. Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Río de Janeiro, 2020. ISSN 2179-8966.
• “Law as Magic. Some Thoughts on Ghosts, Non-Humans, and Shamans” German Law Journal, Vol. 18, Issue 5. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017. ISSN 2071-8322.
• “Law, Justice, Time. A Critique of Transitional Justice from Walter Benjamin’s Politics of Time” Karatzas, K. D. (ed.) Time, Space and Mobility, Interdisciplinary Research Foundation (IRF), Warsaw, 2018. ISBN 978-83-949577-1-1.
• “Who Let the Dogs Out? A Review of Colin Dayan’s ‘The Law is a White Dog’” Birkbeck Law Review, Volume 4, Issue 1. Birkbeck Law Press, London, 2016. ISSN 2052-1308.
• “Hoy, Más que Nunca. Montajes a un nuevo aniversario del Golpe” Bordes. Revista de política, derecho y sociedad, N° 3. UNPAZ, Buenos Aires, 2017. ISSN 2524-9290.
• “Estándares sobre complicidad en el derecho penal internacional y un breve estudio sobre la responsabilidad de los periodistas en graves violaciones a los derechos humanos” Anitua,; Alvarez Nakagawa, and Gaitan (eds.), Los Juicios por crímenes de lesa humanidad, Didot, Buenos Aires, 2015. ISBN 978-987-3620-05-8.
• “La pobreza de la jurisprudencia. Formalismo e ideología en un fallo de usurpación” Pitlevnik, Leonardo (comp.) Jurisprudencia Penal de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación, Tomo N°17, Hammurabi, Buenos Aires, 2014. ISBN 978-950-741-668-2.
• “Acerca de la educación jurídica argentina: algunos aportes desde la pedagogía crítica” Pitlevnik, Leonardo (comp.), Universidad y conflictividad social, Aportes desde la enseñanza del derecho, Editores del Puerto, Buenos Aires, 2012. ISBN 9789872837914.
• “La defensa técnica eficaz en la jurisprudencia de la Corte Suprema de Justicia y en los estándares de los organismos de los Derechos Humanos Pitlevnik, Leonardo (comp.) Jurisprudencia Penal de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación, Tomo N°9, Hammurabi, Buenos Aires, 2010. ISBN 978-950-741-517-3.
• “Comentario al libro ‘De la injusticia penal a la justicia social’ de Roberto Gargarella” Nueva Doctrina Penal, 2009/B, Editores del Puerto, Buenos Aires, 2011. ISSN 1850-9118.
• “Por una defensa de ruptura. Comentario al libro “Estrategia judicial en los procesos políticos” de Jacques Vergès” Revista Derecho y Barbarie, N°3, Buenos Aires, 2010. ISSN: 2250-4125.
• “Violencia legítima y legítima defensa (algunas cuestiones en torno a una intuición benjaminiana)” Revista Derecho y Barbarie, N°2, Buenos Aires, 2009. ISSN 2250-4125.
• “El deber de soportar (La usurpación a la luz del derecho social a la vivienda)” El Dial, Buenos Aires, 2009. ISSN: 2362-3527

Supervision

Dr Alvarez-Nakagawa welcomes proposals for postgraduate supervision in the fields of jurisprudence, critical legal theory, law and the humanities, law and political ontology, socio-legal studies, legal anthropology, legal history, human rights, non-human rights (including animal rights, the rights of nature, and machine rights), international law, environmental law, criminal law, transformative lawyering, and critical legal pedagogies.

If interested, please contact him with a CV and short summary of your proposed project.

Public Engagement

Interview with Dr Alvarez-Nakagawa for the School of Law's Department Digest.

Events

• Workshop with Rahel Jaeggi (Humboldt University) - 17 May 2024
• International Colloquium on the Non-Human Turn in Law - 19-20 June 2023
• Critical Legal Talks series - 3 November 2022-
• Panel Event ‘Rethinking Ecocide’ - 21 June 2022

Related news

• Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa delivers keynote lecture in Germany
  25 September 2023
• Indigenous Peoples and Sustainability
  25 July 2023
• Queen Mary School of Law hosts conference on Law, Society, and Inequality for PhD Scholars
  4 July 2023