On 2 March 2026, the FGV Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, co-funded by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Programme, and the FGV Centre for Global Law, both directed by Professor Paula Wojcikiewicz Almeida, were honored to open the Summer School on Introduction to Advanced Socio-Legal Methods, conducted by Prof. Mikael Rask Madsen and Prof. Salvatore Caserta, in partnership with iCourts (University of Copenhagen). The course will take place from 2 to 5 March and is designed for FGV Rio Law professors and researchers. During this week, the following topics will be addressed: Introduction to Interdisciplinary Legal Research; Reflexive Sociology of Law; Interviewing Legal Elites; and Making It as Researcher. On each day, the Professors will also discuss papers and research projects submitted by the participants.

In the opening lecture, Prof. Madsen assessed how to make law intelligible as a legal and social science, underlining the importance of theory and methodology in law in order for researchers to make reasoned choices. He addressed the growing presence of empirical work and inter-disciplinarity in international law, igniting a reflection on the role of empirics in legal studies. In the second half of the lecture, Prof. Madsen and Prof. Caserta discussed three student papers, with a focus on their proposed theories and methodologies.

We thank the Professors for sharing their valuable insights with us. We are looking forward to the upcoming sessions.

To further information on the Workshop: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UihPg1KSBq1dwB_RBb0yadGQKLYt7nXA/view?usp=drive_link