Elena Caruso

Areas of specialization

Legal Studies;

Gender Equality;

Empirical Legal Methods, Empirical Legal Studies;

Social Movements;

Reproduction;

Legal History.

Background

MA (Law), University of Catania, 2015; LLM (International Law), University of Kent, 2019; PhD (Law), University of Kent, 2023

Elena Caruso is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo, Canada. Elena is also a fellow of the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program, based at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.

Elena held visiting fellowships at the European University Institute, University of Technology Sydney, Melbourne Law School, Osgoode Hall Law School, Cardiff School of Law and Politics and, as Erasmus student, Elena conducted a semester of research at the University of Bonn Law School.

Current Research

Elena is currently working on her new project about how self-managed practices challenge the medico-legal paradigm in the regulation of abortion. At the same time, she is working on the dissemination of her previous research on the feminist movement and the legalisation of abortion in 1970s Italy.

Research Grants

AMTD Waterloo Global Talent Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (2023-2025).
1+3 Scholarship, Economic Social Research Council (ESRC) - Southeast Network for Social Sciences (SeNSS), Kent Law School, University of Kent, United Kingdom (2018-2023).

Selected Publications

Caruso, E. (2024). ‘How did you get in there and make the law work? Feminist activism, doctors and abortion law: the occupation of an hospital’. Social & Legal Studies, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09646639241254359 (open access).

Caruso, E. (2023). ‘The Hyper-Regulation of Abortion Care in Italy‘. International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics, 163(3), pp. 1036-1042 https://doi.org/10.1002/ijgo.15150 (open access).

Caruso, E. (2021). ‘’Much Ado About Nothing?’ The New Policy on Early Medical Abortion (EMA) in Italy’. The Italian Law Journal 7(2), pp. 647-658, https://theitalianlawjournal.it/data/uploads/7-italj-2-2021/6.-7-italj-2-2021-caruso.pdf (open access).

Twitter: https://twitter.com/elena_caruso_