A research institute for the law as lived
ASCEND is the Asian Socio-Legal Centre for Empirical and Doctrinal Research: an independent, public charitable institute in Dhaka.
Statutes and judgments describe what the law is meant to do. People’s lives show what it does. We study the distance between the two: who can use the courts and who cannot, which rules are followed in practice, and which informal institutions carry the weight the formal ones leave behind.
We work in two registers at once. Doctrinal analysis reads the text of the law closely. Empirical fieldwork asks the people it touches. Neither is complete without the other, and our findings are written so that a professor, a practitioner and a student can all check them.
The institute is a public charity. Its work is published in the open, in Bangla and English, and its research with people is overseen by a standing Ethics Review Committee.
Asian Socio-Legal Centre for Empirical and Doctrinal Research
Public charitable research institute
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Bangla and English
Three ways of knowing a legal system
i
Empirical fieldwork
Interviews, observation and case-file study in the places where disputes begin and end.
ii
Doctrinal analysis
Close reading of statutes, rules and judgments, with the reasoning shown.
iii
Mixed methods
Designs that put the text of the law and the evidence of practice side by side.
From proposal to open archive
Every study that involves people follows the same path, and the path is public.
1
Proposal
The team sets out question, method and risks.
2
Ethics review
The Ethics Review Committee clears the design before any fieldwork.
3
Fieldwork
Participants give informed consent and keep control of their data.
4
Analysis
Findings are checked against the law and the field record.
5
Open archive
Outputs are published free, marked as reviewed or not.
Three places to read us
- This site: programmes, the publications library and governance documents.
- The Journal: peer-reviewed socio-legal research, open access.
- The Commons: essays and field notes in Bangla and English.