Staff profile

Ben Lawrence joined Durham Law School as a Career Development Fellow in 2024, having previously been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies, National University of Singapore, and a Teaching Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (London). Prior to this, Ben received his Ph.D. in Law and Society from the University of Victoria (Canada) in December 2019, an M.A. in International and Comparative Legal Studies from SOAS in 2012, and a B.A. from the University of Leicester 2008. His research interests lie in comparative constitutional law and politics, with a particular focus on authoritarianism and post-conflict transitions, and a regional orientation towards Southeast Asia. Most notably, Ben has written extensively on constitutional practice in Cambodia, with his monograph – titled In the Shadow of the Constitution: the Micropolitics of Constitutional Contestation in Cambodia – due to be published with Cambridge University Press in 2025. Elsewhere, Ben’s publications have appeared in the Journal of Law and Religion, the Journal of Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis, the Asian Journal of Law and Society, and Contemporary Southeast Asia. Outside of academia, Ben has worked with the Geneva-based conflict-mediation organisation, the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue; the Constitution-Building program of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance; the Cambodian Development Resource Institute; and the European Union External Action Service.

Teaching Areas

UK Constitutional Law

The Individual and the State

Advanced Issues in Public Law (Constitutions in Transition)

• Comparative Constitutional Law
• Human Rights
• Socio-Legal Studies
• Authoritarianism
• Post-Conflict Transitions
• Southeast Asia

Chapter in book

• Lawrence, B. (2024). From Post-Conflict Coalitions to Regime Consolidation: Constitutional Amendments in Cambodia. In N. Son Bui, & M. Malagodi (Eds.), Asian Comparative Constitutional Law, Volume 2. Bloomsbury Publishing
• Lawrence, B. (2023). The National Assembly and Senate of the Kingdom of Cambodia. In P. Jen Yap, & R. Abeyratne (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Asian Parliaments (125-142). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003109402-10
• Lawrence, B. (2022). Reconstituting the Divided Sangha: Buddhist Authority in Post-Conflict Cambodia. In T. Ginsburg, & B. Schonthal (Eds.), Buddhism and Constitutional Law (220-238). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009286022.015

Journal Article

• Lawrence, B. (2022). The Symbolic Safeguard: Royal Absence in Cambodia’s Constitutional Monarchy. Asian Journal of Law and Society, 9(3), 382-398. https://doi.org/10.1017/als.2022.31
• Lawrence, B. (2022). Saffron Suffrage: Buddhist Monks and Constitutional Politics in Cambodia. Journal of Law and Religion, 37(2), 259-283. https://doi.org/10.1017/jlr.2022.16
• Lawrence, B. (2022). New constitutional rites: indigeneity, legal pluralism and the international finance corporation’s performance standards in Cambodia. Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis, 54(1), 48-67. https://doi.org/10.1080/27706869.2022.2050030
• Lawrence, B. (2021). Authoritarian Constitutional Borrowing and Convergence in Cambodia. Contemporary Southeast Asia, 43(2), 321-344. https://doi.org/10.1355/cs43-2e
• Lawrence, B. (2020). Outlawing Opposition, Imposing Rule of Law: Authoritarian Constitutionalism in Cambodia. Asian Journal of Comparative Law, 15(2), 225-249. https://doi.org/10.1017/asjcl.2021.4