Reflections on developing enduring research collaborations across law and linguistics

Scholarship focused on language in legal settings and in laws themselves is an emerging field that involves diverse research across a variety of disciplines. This research, as a body of work, has a range of potential applications beyond academia across policy-making, professional practice and the interpreta¬ tion and creation of law. However, the disparate nature of this area of research creates challenges for collaboration and for the accessible and impactful dissemination of findings.

This paper was originally presented at the 2019 biennial symposium of the Australian and New Zealand Associations of von Humboldt Fellows, following the theme of "Sharing Knowledge". In it, we share our experiences establishing an interdisciplinary researchers' network, the Law and Linguistics Interdisciplinary Researchers' Network (LLIRN). This initiative was a means of addressing some of these concerns and realizing this potential by strengthening collaboration and cooperation across institutions and disciplines, and by including academics at every career stage. Here, we reflect on the opportunities and challenges arising out of this experience and consider how they could inform researchers with similar goals in other research contexts.