The Sociology of Law department of Lund University hosted the conference of the Research Committee on Sociology of Law (RCSL) on August 30-31 and September 1, 2023. The conference titled “Law, Society and Digital Pasts, Presents and Futures”, aimed to understand how past, present and future societies are mediated through digital technologies and law. The conference gathered socio-legal scholars from all over the world in order to broaden the discussions around sociology and law in a time of high digitalisation in the forms of “platform-based markets, robots, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), digital fencing and sensing by machines in border creation, and city planning, as well as automated state decision-making and digitization of legal archives, courts and other dispute resolution fora”.

The Central Asian Law and MOCCA projects had a combined panel at the conference titled “Corruption and Informal Legal Orders in Central Asia”. The project participants presented their research projects on the following topics:

“Administrative law reforms in Uzbekistan: legal motives vs social realities” by Tolibjon Mustafoev;

“Business associations as a driving institution in Kyrgyz business environment” by Chekhros Kilichova;

“Art, humour and anti-corruption activism in Uzbekistan” by Sherzod Eraliev and Rustamjon Urinboyev;

Contemporary approaches to the legal research: a quantitative analysis of legal change in Uzbekistan” by Dilaver Khamzaev and Werner Bergamin Hertzog;

“Legal informality and debt-based trade in Uzbekistan. A case study of rural Ferghana Valley” by Elmurod Sobirov.

The project participants received questions, comments and constructive feedback on their research papers.