My research is in the area of cultural property and legal theory, focussing on the emergence of cultural property regulation and heritage legislation as discourses of modernity. I look at the problems of defining cultural property, the controversy surrounding the ownership of the Parthenon Marbles, and how museums and the repatriation of ancient skeletons fit within the debates regarding the cultural commons. My work draws on modern philosophy from Nietzsche onwards, as well as literary theory.

Dr Flessas has served as a consultant to the British Museum (with Professor Lionel Bently, Cambridge University); and is a consultant on legal issues for Artwatch International and Artwatch UK.

LL4BT Cultural Property and Heritage Law

LL4BU Art Law

Murphy, Roberts & Flessas, Understanding Property Law, 4th Edition (Sweet & Maxwell 2004)

Understanding Property Law provides a background to an area of law which is notoriously inaccessible. Standing back from their subject, the authors of this book elucidate how the practices of the past have shaped the development and form of the modern law. In doing so they stress the role of lawyers in the transactions - such as sale, gift and inheritance - in which their clients become involved. This focus upon the work which lawyers do in their offices provides a necessary complement to the emphasis on legislation and adjudication found in most textbooks.

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• 'Too expensive to treat? Non-treatment decisions at the margins of viability' Medical Law Review (first published online 13/11/18) (with Emily Jackson)
• 'Limiting Law: Art in the Street and Street in the Art' Law, Culture and the Humanities (2016) pp.1-23 with Linda Mulcahy
• 'The Ends of the Museum' (May 29, 2013). Law Society and Economy Working Paper Series No. 14/2013
• 'Emerging Commons' (2008) Social and Legal Studies Journal 17(3), Special Issue 2008 (21 pages) with J. Horder
• 'The Repatriation Debate and the Discourse of the Commons' published in LSE Law, Society and Economy Working Paper Series  WPS 10-2007 October 2007 [to be published in Social and Legal Studies, Oct.2008]
• 'The Future Will Not Stop Escaping Us, The Teaching from the Left: A Conference at Harvard Law School: Part V: International Law' 31 New York University Review of Law & Social Change 661 (2006/07)
• 'A house haunted by justice: Eichmann in Jerusalem' 9 Law Text Culture 215 (2005)
• 'Cultural Property Defined, and Redefined as Nietzschean Aphorism' 24 Cardozo Law Review 1067 (2003)
• 'Sacrificial Stone' 14(1) Law and Literature 49 (2002)