The idea behind Philawson originally emerged within the framework of the annual ISOS Conferences, where an increasing number of talks and presentations were notably held by PhDs and Postdocs in Legal Studies. Therefore, we decided to create a friendly and horizontal space where young scholars can meet to primarily share their interests, connect, and study together.
ISOS News is a blog series where we invite members to share their experiences with various ISOS initiatives, including the small grants program (which you can read more about here). Applications for 2027 will open later this year.
The first post in this series is by Virginia Presi, now a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Pavia (Italy). As Virginia describes below, she and Alba Lojo (Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Roma Tre University) used their grant money to organize the first in-person meeting of “Philawson”, a network that brings together social ontology and the philosophy of law. Make sure to check out the links at the end of the post if you would like to get involved!
The idea behind Philawson originally emerged within the framework of the annual ISOS Congresses, where an increasing number of talks and presentations were notably held by PhDs and Postdocs in Legal Studies. Therefore, we decided to create a friendly and horizontal space where young scholars can meet to primarily share their interests, connect, and study together. The aim is to continue the path that, in recent decades, important well-known scholars have opened by exploring issues of social ontology from the perspective of the philosophy of law.
Therefore, in September 2023, we kicked off our activities with a monthly reading group, held online to facilitate participation from all of us. Later, we decided to apply for ISOS Small Grants (2024 cycle) in the hope of securing a space for in-person meetings in the following year—since not all of us had met in person yet—and to organize an original event based on what we had learned about the intersection of social ontology and the philosophy of law after a year of shared study of classical texts during our reading group. Moreover, we were also excited about the possibility of using this event as a tool to reach new scholars interested in Philawson.
Eventually, we succeeded. On the 28th and 29th of November 2024, the Department of Legal Sciences ‘Cesare Beccaria’ of the University of Milan hosted the 1st PHILAWSON Workshop, Contemporary Views on Social Ontology and Philosophy of Law. The event was organized by two members of Philawson, Alba Lojo (Roma Tre University) and myself.
The workshop began with a plenary session by Andrei Marmor (Cornell University) and was divided into the three sections that our network explores during our reading groups: themes, methods, and authors at the intersection among social ontology and philosophy of law. Each section was introduced by specialists (Paolo di Lucia and Lorenzo Passerini, legal scholars, for themes; Francesco Guala, a philosopher, for methods; and Giuseppe Lorini, a legal scholar, for authors) and included several contributions from speakers from universities all over Europe. In fact, to promote Philawson and attract potential new members, we launched a Call for Abstracts, which received a significant number of applicants for just four available slots.
We are happy with how the workshop went for several reasons. First and foremost, we had to expand our research interests thanks to the variety of research presented. Then, we were amused by the internationality of the participants (who came from Japan, Switzerland, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Poland, and Italy). As organizers, we particularly appreciated the active participation of young scholars, whose dynamic involvement in talks and chairing sessions was key to the event’s outcome. The event was designed for them.
The workshop achieved three other main (and desired) goals: providing young scholars with equal space compared to experts; facilitating high-level discussions in person between Philawson members and new participants; and bringing together philosophers and legal scholars (the Workshop was held at the Faculty of Law of Milan but also attracted many attendees from the Philosophy Department). We were able to achieve all of that while maintaining gender parity.
Finally, securing the ISOS small grant marked the beginning of a virtuous cycle of positive outcomes: we had a Philawson "week" full of events. We welcomed Andrei Marmor on Monday. He gave a seminar on Tuesday within the PhD Programme in Legal Sciences, co-organized by the POLITEIA Association (the seminar was titled Rationalizing Practices: A Dialogue with Andrei Marmor). We had a guided art tour of the University on Wednesday—usually free for international events—as a welcoming gesture for the workshop participants. And then the Workshop took place on Thursday and Friday. In addition to these scientific and cultural events, Alba and I interviewed Marmor on relevant issues in legal theory and current debates on institutional foundations of society, later published as an article in the journal Politeia, leaving a permanent postcard of the week of Philawson in Milan. You can read the interview here.
The ISOS funding was crucial to the successful development of the event. First and foremost, it provided the necessary support for us to begin organizing the workshop seriously. Second, it allowed us to cover catering expenses (two lunches and four coffee breaks) and to offer one scholarship to a speaker who lacked institutional funding for travel and accommodations. Both of these expenses were fully covered thanks to additional support from the PhD programme in Legal Sciences ‘Cesare Beccaria’ at the University of Milan (where I was a PhD Candidate at the time). Lastly, the Journal of Social Ontology will publish a special issue with the proceedings of the workshop. None of this would have been possible without the environment provided by ISOS and the continuous engagement of Philawson members in the project.
For details about the program, the poster, and photos from the event, please visit Law & Philosophy Group News, shared by the Law & Philosophy Group at Pompeu Fabra University, of which Alba is a member.
We want to conclude by saying that we are also very happy to share that the Philawson network is about to hold its second international workshop in Madrid in November 2026, the 2nd Philawson Workshop, Contemporary Views on Social Ontology and Philosophy of Law. This workshop demonstrates the continuity of this international project and is also funded by an ISOS grant (2026 cycle), reflecting the strong commitment and support that the Society has for the existence of Philawson.
This second edition of the workshop will be organized by two other Philawson members, Sebastián Jesus Figueroa Rubio and Matilde Rey Aramendía (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) and will place particular emphasis on vulnerability and non-ideal social ontology. Addressing these themes offers an opportunity to explore how social ontology and legal philosophy can illuminate collective agency, institutional responsibility, and normative responses in contexts marked by ecological and social precarity. The event will bring together distinguished scholars in social ontology and legal theory, including Åsa Burman and Kenneth Ehrenberg, as well as Philawson members themselves, making it a further occasion for the network to meet in person and engage in discussion on shared research interests.
In short, if we have sparked your curiosity about the Philawson network, you can find more information on our website, including who we are and how to contact us. Moreover, do not miss the latest updates on the 2nd Philawson Workshop: our webpage already hosts the (now closed) Call for Abstracts, and the official programme and flyer will be published there soon. We look forward to hear from you!
Virginia Presi, back at the time of the small workshop, was a PhD Candidate in Legal Sciences at the University of Milan with a research focus on social normativity and the ontology of norms at the threshold of law. In November 2025, Virginia was awarded her PhD (cum laude), and she has now joined the Generic Reasoning Project at the University of Pavia. She works in legal theory and the philosophy of normativity. Her specific interests concern the normative force of social customs in law and social ontology, with particular attention to the nature of normative attitudes and the ontology of social norms. Given her philosophical background, she is also interested in deontic logic and normative reasoning, in particular in the role played by social normativity in the making of generic notions. You can visit her website here.
Alba Lojo is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Legal Philosophy at Roma Tre University (Italy) and an affiliated professor at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Spain). She holds a PhD in Law (cum laude) from Pompeu Fabra University (ES), with a dissertation on constitutive rules, and her work bridges legal theory and social ontology. Her research focuses on the metaphysics of institutions, the theory of constitutive rules, the epistemological challenges of legal theory, and, more generally, the understanding of legal concepts from a meta-theoretical perspective. Beyond these core interests, she has developed work on norm-generating practices, the role of mental states and collective acceptance in institutional reality, and the connections between analytic philosophy and contemporary legal theory.
"International Social Ontology Society" is registered as a non-profit organization in Austria.
