Jules Rochielle SievertCollective legal capacity
How communities develop shared knowledge, relationships, confidence, practices, and infrastructure that allow people to interpret legal conditions, support one another, and act together.
03 · Research & writing
Research for collective capacity and systems change
My research examines how communities build the knowledge, relationships, infrastructures, and collective capacity required to act within systems of law and power. It connects participatory research, spatial justice, cultural organizing, and institutional change.
Research agenda
Three connected lines of inquiry
Participatory systems change
How participatory research can redistribute authorship, connect community knowledge with institutional resources, and produce programs and infrastructures that endure beyond a single intervention.
Spatial and technological justice
How law, place, data, digital systems, and institutional arrangements co-produce access, exclusion, power, and possibilities for collective action.
Current research
Collaborative projects and work in development
- 2025–nowAgenDa — Research Collaborator, University of TurkuA Research Council of Finland-funded project examining how digital technologies, spatial configurations, and legal systems co-produce justice and power. I contribute perspectives from participatory research, design justice, and spatial inquiry.
- 2025–nowFA(i)R: Feeling All Rights in the Digital World — Collaborating Project Advisor, JKU–LIT Open Innovation CenterAn interdisciplinary project exploring how rights, embodiment, and everyday experience are shaped within digital and algorithmic environments, and how participatory methods can support more just and transparent digital futures.
- 2025–nowBC Access to Justice Center for Excellence — Advisory Board Member, University of British ColumbiaI contribute to strategic discussions about the emerging center and advise on approaches to access-to-justice research and institutional innovation.
- Emerging partnershipPublicLegalDesign — Rojda TosunA developing collaboration around community perspectives, systems transformation, and field-building across justice institutions.
- 2023–nowDoing Justice Collective — MemberI am a member of this international group of researchers and artivists examining how justice can be practiced within transdisciplinary and transformative research. The collective formed during a June 2023 summer school organized by the Leibniz Research Network “Knowledge for Sustainable Development” and the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development. Our inquiry asks why justice matters in transformative research; how justice is understood; which methods can guide practice; and how researchers, practitioners, facilitators, and artists can navigate institutional power, plural forms of knowledge, and the challenges of genuine co-creation. The collective produced Doing Justice! Doing Just This! and its companion, the Dialogues on Justice card deck.
- September 2026Law, Justice and Design ObservatoryAn open-access register of 291 law and justice labs across 73 countries, with dated verification and a validating taxonomy. In development and launching at the end of September 2026.
- In developmentDesign LabsA companion register of 115 design labs across 37 countries, catalogued by justice lens and design tradition.
- In developmentCultivating the Ecologies of Collective Legal CapacityA book project connecting cultural organizing, legal empowerment, spatial production, participatory inquiry, and the design of durable civic and institutional infrastructures.
Selected publications
Books, chapters, articles, and doctoral research
- 2024Legal Design: Dignifying People in Legal Systems — co-editor with Miso Kim and Dan JacksonCambridge University Press.
- 2024“Dignifying Imagination in Legal Education”In Legal Design: Dignifying People in Legal Systems. Cambridge University Press.
- 2020“The Rapid Embrace of Legal Design and the Use of Co-Design to Avoid Enshrining Systemic Bias” — with Dan Jackson and Miso KimDesign Issues 36(3), 16–30.
- 2025“Transforming Communities: Addressing Housing Instability through Art, Advocacy, and Collective Action” — with Miso KimIn the Routledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning.
- 2025Doctoral dissertation — Transformative Transdisciplinary Legal DesignCollege of Art, Media and Design, Northeastern University.
- Forthcoming“Law and the Body”In the Routledge Handbook of Law and the City.
- 2024Doing Justice! Doing Just This! Practicing justice in transdisciplinary and transformative research — Doing Justice CollectiveKatrin Beer, Hernán Bobadilla, Kristina Bogner, Stefanie Burkhart, Franziska Ehnert, Veronica Hector, Alexander Herwix, Neelakshi Joshi, Marina Novikova, Jules Rochielle Sievert, and Eveline Wandl-Vogt. Companion publication to the Dialogues on Justice card deck. Download the publication (PDF) or visit the DOI record.
- 2026Dialogues on Justice: A Card Deck to Guide Justice Circle Practice — with Hernán Felipe Bobadilla Rodriguez, Stefanie Burkhart, Franziska Ehnert, Marina Novikova, and Eveline Wandl-VogtAn open-access tool developed by the Doing Justice Collective to help researchers, community members, practitioners, facilitators, and other societal actors engage with justice through shared questions, dialogue, exploration, and reflection. Developed through justice circles, workshops, and collaborative research, the deck is organized around dimensions of justice, concepts of justice, approaches to justice, and thematic or domain-specific understandings. Published by the Doing Justice Collective under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Read about the deck at ISOE or access the open publication.
Selected earlier writing
Art, public practice, and collective work
- 2015“Navigating the Third Space” — with B. Stephen CarpenterJournal of Curriculum and Pedagogy 12(2).
- 2015“Together Work”Engaging Publics / Public Engagement Symposium, Auckland.
- 2014“What is Post Social Practice?”Open Engagement: 100 Artists in 100 Days, published with the Queens Museum.
- 2012“Taking to the Streets: Food, Art and Politics”Public Art Review, Issue 43.
- 2012“Together Work” and “Something More Than Survival”Material Conditions, published by Proboscis, London.
- 2008“Mapping Community”In Access All Areas: Conversations on Engaged Arts, ed. Tania Willard. Grunt Gallery, Vancouver.
Selected coverage
Where the work has been discussed
- WSJ · NYTBoth covered the Public Artist in Residence work with female veterans in Harlem (2015).
- The National JuristNamed the Laboratory Seminar in Applied Design and Legal Empowerment one of ten “out of the ordinary” law school courses.
- 2018Garcia, M. “Change from the Inside-Out.”ArtPlace America.
- 2017Davis, Martha F. “Design Challenges for Human Rights Cities.”Columbia Human Rights Law Review 49(1).
- 2016Jackson, Dan. “Human-centered legal tech: integrating design in legal education.”The Law Teacher 50(1).
- 2016Vij, D. “Making Space for Artists in Government.”A Blade of Grass.
- 2015Schubert, L. and M. Gray, on socially engaged art practice.British Journal of Social Work 45(4).
- 2014Stakenas, Carol. “Together Work.”Art21 Magazine.
- 2008Cited in Totten, M. Promising Practices for Addressing Youth Involvement in Gangs.
Public scholarship
Selected talks, convenings, and residencies
- 2024Track Chair, “Spatial Justice in Design Research” — Design Research Society, Boston
- 2024Presenter — International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Oñati, Spain
- 2024Presenter — SAR International Forum on Artistic Research, Tilburg
- 2024Presenter — CAMD PhD Symposium with Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London
- 2023Summer School, Justice in Transition Design — Leibniz IOER, Dresden
- 2023Presenter — Amsterdam Law Hub, University of Amsterdam
- 2023Presenter — University of Turku School of Law, Finland
- 2021Keynote — Aboagora Symposium, Sibelius Museum, Turku
- 2020Uncertainty Seminar — Stroom Den Haag, Netherlands
- 2019Research Residency — Stroom Den Haag, Netherlands
- 2019“Decolonizing Technologies, Reprogramming Education” — University of British Columbia
- 2019Paradox European Fine Art Forum biennial conference — Riga, Latvia
- 2019Arts in Society conference — Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon
- 2018PolicyLink Equity Summit — Chicago
- 2018Design Futures Panel — Detroit Collaborative Design Center
- 2017Social Justice in Applied Technology and Service Design — MIT Day of Action
- 2016Artists In and Of the City — Queens Museum, New York
- 2015The Legal Medium — Yale Law School
- 2015Social Media and Activism — Goldsmiths College, London
- 2014Engaging Publics — Auckland Art Gallery and AUT University
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