Sarah Vanuxem

After studying law and philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Sarah Vanuxem defended a thesis entitled Des choses saisies par la propriété (preface by Th. Revet, Institut de Recherches Juridiques de la Sorbonne, 2012).

She has been a lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the Université Côte d’Azur since 2012. Her research lies at the crossroads of property law and environmental law, with forays into environmental philosophy, anthropology of nature and legal history.

Together with C. Guibet-Lafaye, she co-edited the book Repenser la propriété, un essai de politique écologique (Presses Universitaires d’Aix-Marseille, 2015), wrote various articles and authored two essays: La propriété de la terre (Wildproject, 2018) and Des choses de la nature et de leurs droits (Quae, 2020).

The title of the research project she is carrying out at Villa Medici is: Du droit de déambuler. Rewriting Legal Fictions in the Age of the Anthropocene and is based on the study of the right to wander in response to ecological upheaval.

To do this, she plans to keep a survey diary in the language of law, to design legal tools to promote rights of passage and to write legal science fiction. In contrast to the generalised sedentary lifestyle favoured by our industrial societies, Sarah Vanuxem will rethink the rules of law from this fiction, which reimaginesus all as nomads.

Since the right to walk on the land is often claimed by certain entities, she will follow the Italian beni comuni or ‘common property’ movement, with an investigation into the ‘Villa Borghese versus Rome’ ruling, by which the ius deambulandi was put into practice for those dwelling in the city of Rome in 1887. She will also join “Stalker”, the pioneering group of Roman artist-walkers. For Wildproject, she will prepare a book based on the following themes: ‘wandering’, ‘hunting, gathering, fishing, gleaning’, ‘transhumance’, ‘wandering’, and ‘fleeing and taking refuge’.

© Daniele Molajoli