News & Events

On 5 November 2025, the ERC-funded BILQIS Project, together with the Centre for Law, Religion and Society (CLRS) and the Irish Centre for Human Rights (ICHR), hosted a joint lecture by Dr Mobeen Hussain (University of York) and Dr Nazife Kosukoğlu (University of Galway, BILQIS).

Titled “Wives, Strangers, and Subjects: Marriage Law and Gendered Control in South Asia and Turkey,” the session brought the two scholars into conversation on how marriage law has historically served as a mechanism of governance, regulation of intimacy, and gendered authority across different legal and political contexts.

Drawing on colonial and post-colonial legal debates in India, Dr Hussain examined how conjugality and the “modern wife” were constructed through law, reform discourse, and social anxieties.
Dr Kosukoğlu presented findings from her extensive study of Turkish Court of Cassation cases, showing how unofficial religious marriages are alternately recognised and marginalised in ways that shape women’s vulnerability and access to justice.

The session offered a comparative reflection on how legal regimes shape intimate life, a key theme within BILQIS’s work on gender, law, and authority.

For more details and the full session overview, please see the original CLRS announcement: https://www.universityofgalway.ie/research-sites/centreforlawreligionsociety/newsevents/third-lecture-in-the-gender-and-human-rights-lecture-series.html