A three-day writing workshop for the South Asian early career researchers was held at Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB) from October 12-14. The event was organised by the Department of Law at IUB in collaboration with Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham; British Academy and South Asian Institute of Advanced Legal and Human Rights Studies (SAILS).

In nine separate feedback sessions, 18 papers from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Nepal were presented in this Workshop. Each presenter got five minutes to present his/her paper and two commentators made observation on the paper for 20 minutes, and at the end another 20 minutes were given for group discussion and question-answer by other participants. The paper presenters received in-depth and critical feedback from both national and international legal scholars, namely Professor Dr. Borhan Uddin Khan (University of Dhaka), Professor Dr. Ridwanul Hoque (University of Dhaka), Dr. Rumana Islam (University of Dhaka), Dr. Sharif Bhuiyan (SAILS), Professor Dr. Susan Marks (London School of Economics and Political Science), Professor Dr. Kate Bedford (Birmingham Law School), Professor Dr. Matthew Craven (SOAS University of London), Professor Dr. Shirin Rai (Warwick Law School), Dr. Mohammad Shahabuddin (Birmingham Law School), Professor Dr. Fiona de Londras (Birmingham Law School), and Professor Prabha Kotiswaran (King's College London).

Three panel discussions were also arranged for the participants, focussing on the challenges of researching and publishing in South Asia, skills of and strategy for writing and publishing in globally standard and high-impact scholarly journals.

At the final day of the Workshop, Professor Dr. Fiona de Londras presented a keynote paper on the issue of human rights and counter terrorism, while Professor Dr. Kate Bedford and Professor Dr. Matthew Craven reflected on the Workshop. In the closing session, Dr. Kamal Hossain, Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, SAILS, as the chief guest addressed the participants by saying that the South Asian young scholars have many things to contribute for the development and enrichment international law. He hoped that the participants would take the best lesson of learnings from this Workshop and utilise them to enrich their academic careers in the days to come. Professor M. Omar Rahman, the Vice Chancellor of IUB, also addressed the participants. In his speech, he assured that IUB would extend its support more to organise this type of programmes in future. The Workshop came to end with the vote of thanks forwarded by Professor Dr. Borhan Uddin Khan (Organiser from Bangladesh side) and Dr. Mohammad Shahabuddin (Organiser from UK side). The organisers are hoping to arrange a follow-up workshop in December 2018.

Covered by Law Desk.