Hanna
Malik
Links
Areas of expertise
Biography
My research is situated between (critical) corporate criminology, law, and regulation and governance studies, in the middle ground between calls for a radical overhaul of the entire structure of state-corporate relations and incremental reformist actions propagated by critical realists. While I recognise the need for a broader change at the macro-level, my goal has been to amplify voices of regulators on the ground, lawmakers and those affected, emphasizing fluid character of regulatory process and the need for continuous struggler over regulation.
The Faculty of Law at University of Turku (UTU Law) has been my academic home since August 2016. At UTU Law, I have developed from doctrinal criminal scholar to critical socio-legal scholar. Originally from Poland, I have defended my doctoral dissertation at the Center for Interdisciplinary Polish Studies (ZIP) of European University Viadrina (EUV), Germany. In my dissertation, I analyse the emergence, evolution and implementation of corporate (quasi)criminal liability laws in Poland and Germany in a broad historic and socio-economic context through a combination of comparative legal and doctrinal legal method.
After the doctoral phase, I have shifted from dogmatic analysis of criminal law to critical socio-legal analysis of regulatory approaches to state-corporate abuses of power at the intersection of political economy and criminology. I explored and documented social harms generated at the state-corporate-technology nexus and regulatory responses to these harms, through comparative legal and qualitative empirical methodologies.
Teaching
My research approach influenced by critical, law-in-context approaches transpires into teaching. I view my role as a teacher not only to encourage a motivating atmosphere for learning and students´ own explorations, but most importantly to foster critical thinking about law´s intrinsic qualities, its neutrality and objectivity in relation to power.
My own higher education in Poland was largely targeted towards surface level of learning. As students, we were required to memorise large amounts of legal texts, while the deep understanding of the learned material was neglected. This approach has facilitated a positivist approach to law and legal studies, while thinking critically about knowledge transmitted from the teachers was discouraged. Building on this negative experience, in my own teaching I utilise constructivist methods encouraging students to think critically about learned material and to go beyond the level of black letter law and legal dogmatic.
I teach in the areas of comparative law and comparative legal research, criminology of powerful, and criminal law. My courses include:
- “Comparative Legal Research” (12 ECTS)
- “Corporate Crime, Law and Power” (12 ECTS)
- "Law, Memory and Social Change” (5 ECTS)
- “Law-making process as a site of struggle: the case of corporate crime and harm regulation” (5 ECTS)
- “Legal cultures of Europe” (5 ECTS)
- “White-Collar and Corporate Crime Regulation” (5 ECTS).
Morover, I represent Faculty of Law in developing thr EC2U Joint Master´s Programme on Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.
Research
I am committed to critical, transdisciplinary, plurilingual and comparative perspectives to law as societal, political and cultural phenomena. Following traditions of law-in-context studies and critical criminology, I focus on the interactions between law, society and power in different political and socio-economic contexts. In my research, I combine traditional legal-doctrinal analysis, comparative law-in-context analysis, and socio-legal empirical research methods.