Ways of Knowing after Atrocity: A knowledge exchange on the methods used to formulate, implement and assess transitional justice processes
Lead Research Organisation:
King's College London
Department Name: Dickson Poon School of Law Departments
Abstract
The OTJR/swisspeace Knowledge Exchange examines the methods used to formulate, implement and assess transitional justice.
Transitional justice provides a broad set of legal and non-legal responses to serious human rights violations committed during periods of conflict or repressive rule. Human rights trials, truth commissions, memorialisation projects and restorative justice processes are implemented with increasing frequency across the globe. However, as different approaches to transitional justice have been advocated and implemented, there have been clashes over the means through which lawyers, civil society actors, policy-makers, scholars and local populations know atrocity and respond to it. There is therefore a need for a knowledge exchange on the ways of knowing atrocity and our responses to it.
The divergent methods used to examine serious human rights violations and the contexts in which these violations occurred have challenged the evidentiary bases of criminal convictions and truth commission reports. While cross-national studies have now identified general trends in the practice of transitional justice, these studies may not necessarily produce the kinds of knowledge useful for specific country contexts. At the same time detailed case studies, in carefully emphasising the particularities of a transition, may constrain the learning and adapting of knowledge across countries. It is crucial to bridge these divides through expertise-sharing among legal practitioners, transitional justice scholars, human rights advocacy groups, violence-affected communities and policy-makers.
The OTJR/swisspeace Knowledge Exchange aims to bridge the methodological divides within the practice and research of transitional justice. The project will examine the current methods used to determine the occurrence of serious human rights violations and wider societal harms, the methods used to respond to these harms and the means used to assess the impact of these transitional justice interventions. The project will consist of four knowledge exchange activities; 1) an online forum connecting transitional justice scholars with the research users; the legal practitioners, civil society groups and policy-makers implementing transitional justice processes; 2) a seminar series that will allow for a sustained inquiry and exchange between these stakeholders, resulting in the development of a methods-training manual; 3) two practice-oriented workshops run in Rwanda and Kosovo with in-country scholars and research-users, using the training manual to deepen the practice and research of transitional justice in affected countries; 4) a final evaluation meeting which will assess the dissemination and impact of the online forum, the seminar series and the practice-oriented workshops.
Transitional justice provides a broad set of legal and non-legal responses to serious human rights violations committed during periods of conflict or repressive rule. Human rights trials, truth commissions, memorialisation projects and restorative justice processes are implemented with increasing frequency across the globe. However, as different approaches to transitional justice have been advocated and implemented, there have been clashes over the means through which lawyers, civil society actors, policy-makers, scholars and local populations know atrocity and respond to it. There is therefore a need for a knowledge exchange on the ways of knowing atrocity and our responses to it.
The divergent methods used to examine serious human rights violations and the contexts in which these violations occurred have challenged the evidentiary bases of criminal convictions and truth commission reports. While cross-national studies have now identified general trends in the practice of transitional justice, these studies may not necessarily produce the kinds of knowledge useful for specific country contexts. At the same time detailed case studies, in carefully emphasising the particularities of a transition, may constrain the learning and adapting of knowledge across countries. It is crucial to bridge these divides through expertise-sharing among legal practitioners, transitional justice scholars, human rights advocacy groups, violence-affected communities and policy-makers.
The OTJR/swisspeace Knowledge Exchange aims to bridge the methodological divides within the practice and research of transitional justice. The project will examine the current methods used to determine the occurrence of serious human rights violations and wider societal harms, the methods used to respond to these harms and the means used to assess the impact of these transitional justice interventions. The project will consist of four knowledge exchange activities; 1) an online forum connecting transitional justice scholars with the research users; the legal practitioners, civil society groups and policy-makers implementing transitional justice processes; 2) a seminar series that will allow for a sustained inquiry and exchange between these stakeholders, resulting in the development of a methods-training manual; 3) two practice-oriented workshops run in Rwanda and Kosovo with in-country scholars and research-users, using the training manual to deepen the practice and research of transitional justice in affected countries; 4) a final evaluation meeting which will assess the dissemination and impact of the online forum, the seminar series and the practice-oriented workshops.
Planned Impact
Beneficary: swisspeace
The knowledge exchange will lead to the development of the transitional justice training manual that will improve the capacity-building initiatives undertaken by swisspeace and will strengthen its strategic partnership with OTJR. The potential impact will be an integrated practice and research oriented approach to transitional justice.
Beneficiary: International Criminal Lawyers
The legal practitioners from the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the ad hoc Tribunals who are involved in the online forum, seminar series and methods workshops will strengthen their strategic partnerships with civil society groups and scholars. Human rights reports have formed the basis for much of the initial investigations underpinning international criminal trials and scholars have played a central role as expert witnesses in these cases. A clearer understanding of the methods used by these diverse groups will benefit the international criminal lawyers as users of this research.
Beneficiary: Human Rights Civil Society Groups
Civil society groups that monitor the occurrence of serious human rights violations and assist in implementing responses to these violations, will have cutting edge research on current methods used to formulate, implement and research transitional justice. The potential impact will be the strengthening of the empirical evidence underpinning human rights reports. The practice-oriented workshops in Rwanda and Kosovo will enhance the research capacity of NGO's, researchers and human rights lawyers in these transitional countries and provide a model for future methodology training workshops.
Beneficiary: Policy-makers and the international development community which implement policies in countries emerging from conflict and/or repressive rule
The policy-makers will gain exposure to evidence-based knowledge, using diverse methods, on the impact of transitional justice interventions in post-conflict contexts, potentially impacting their approach to formulating and implementing transitional justice processes.
The knowledge exchange will lead to the development of the transitional justice training manual that will improve the capacity-building initiatives undertaken by swisspeace and will strengthen its strategic partnership with OTJR. The potential impact will be an integrated practice and research oriented approach to transitional justice.
Beneficiary: International Criminal Lawyers
The legal practitioners from the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the ad hoc Tribunals who are involved in the online forum, seminar series and methods workshops will strengthen their strategic partnerships with civil society groups and scholars. Human rights reports have formed the basis for much of the initial investigations underpinning international criminal trials and scholars have played a central role as expert witnesses in these cases. A clearer understanding of the methods used by these diverse groups will benefit the international criminal lawyers as users of this research.
Beneficiary: Human Rights Civil Society Groups
Civil society groups that monitor the occurrence of serious human rights violations and assist in implementing responses to these violations, will have cutting edge research on current methods used to formulate, implement and research transitional justice. The potential impact will be the strengthening of the empirical evidence underpinning human rights reports. The practice-oriented workshops in Rwanda and Kosovo will enhance the research capacity of NGO's, researchers and human rights lawyers in these transitional countries and provide a model for future methodology training workshops.
Beneficiary: Policy-makers and the international development community which implement policies in countries emerging from conflict and/or repressive rule
The policy-makers will gain exposure to evidence-based knowledge, using diverse methods, on the impact of transitional justice interventions in post-conflict contexts, potentially impacting their approach to formulating and implementing transitional justice processes.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Nicola Palmer (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Abtahi H
(2015)
Types of Injury in Inter-State Reparation Claims: A Guide for the International Criminal Court
in Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société
Ingelaere B
(2015)
Learning "To Be" Kinyarwanda in Postgenocide Rwanda: Immersion, Iteration, and Reflexivity in Times of Transition
in Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société
Jones B
(2015)
Stories of "Success": Narrative, Expertise, and Claims to Knowledge
in Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société
Krog A
(2015)
Research into Reconciliation and Forgiveness at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Homi Bhabha's "Architecture of the New"
in Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société
Nguyen N
(2015)
Memory in the Aftermath of War: Australian Responses to the Vietnamese Refugee Crisis of 1975
in Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société
Palmer N
(2014)
Re-examining resistance in post-genocide Rwanda
in Journal of Eastern African Studies
Palmer N
(2015)
Introduction: Ways of Knowing Atrocity: A Methodological Enquiry into the Formulation, Implementation, and Assessment of Transitional Justice
in Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société
Price M
(2015)
The Limits of Observation for Understanding Mass Violence
in Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société
Robins S
(2015)
Participatory Methodologies with Victims: An Emancipatory Approach to Transitional Justice Research
in Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société
| Title | Final Evaluation and Implementation Meeting: Exploring the Nexus between Academic and Advocacy Research |
| Description | To start the final evaluation and implementation meeting, our civil society partners, swisspeace launched the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual', at a well attended panel discussion in Bern Switzerland. |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Impact | The youtube movie has been viewed online and offers an introduction to the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual'. |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGD1wM9-88I |
| Description | This project aimed to bridge the methodological divides within the practice and research of transitional justice, making scholarly research more accessible to actors implementing responses to atrocity. As a Knowledge Exchange, the project facilitated expertise-sharing among academics and practitioners through an online forum, a seminar series, a set of practice-oriented workshops, the development of a 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual' and the publication of a Special Edition of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society (forth-coming 2015). Key findings: 1) Exploring the nexus between policy decision-making and research methods • Finding: A focus on research methods provides a productive avenue through which to assess policy decisions relating to responses to serious human right violations in conflict zones. • Activity: OTJR hosted an on-line debate examining the role of international monitors, such as the UN Group of Experts or human rights groups, in reporting on mass conflict. The discussion centred on donor responses to recent military activities in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Jason K. Stearns, director of the Rift Valley Institute's Usalama Project debated with Phil Clark, Lecturer in Comparative and International Politics at SOAS, University of London. The discussion ran from March until July 2013 and included moderation and guest commentaries from leading academics and policy think tanks. During this period the website was viewed by 3186 individual users, with the majority of web traffic coming from the United Kingdom, Rwanda, the United States of America, Switzerland, Belgium, Kenya, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, United Arab Emirates and Australia. A focus on the process and methods used in reporting on human rights abuses highlighted key points of difference and welcome points of agreement between the contributors. Two key differences were whether donors can and should verify primary sources and whether international actors amplify or silence domestic reporting. While one clear point of agreement was that locally specific political knowledge should inform both report writing and decision-making. • Output: OTJR website and on-line platform 2) Developing a network through research seminars and roundtable discussions • Finding: Research networks can be fostered through integrating web-based discussions with a series of research seminars and roundtable discussions. • Activities: From January 2013 to January 2014, OTJR and its civil society partner swisspeace, in collaboration with the Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College, London and the Leuven Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, KU Leuven, hosted 12 public seminars and 8 roundtable discussions. With attendees from barrister chambers involved in international criminal trials, academic institutions and third sector organisations, these exchanges drew together work conducted by political scientists, psychologists, international lawyers, literary writers, human rights activists and anthropologists. Each speaker provided a written paper in advance in order to enhance the discussions and exchanges. The seminars and roundtables were integrated into the development of the new OTJR website, providing a set of pod-casts, blog posts and seminar abstracts as an on-line resources relating to the methods currently deployed in the study of transitional justice. • Outputs: OTJR/swisspeace Podcasts, Seminars and Workshops; Blog posts: Summaries of key questions raised in the roundtable discussions; Transitional Justice Methods Manual 3) Building research capacity and fostering ethical research in transitional justice • Findings: Workshops on methods and methodologies with civil society researchers and academics in transitional countries strengthens the development of practice-oriented training materials and highlights important ethical constraints when conducting research in post-conflict contexts. • Activities: On the 16th-17th July and 18th- 19th September 2013, OTJR and swisspeace hosted two practice-oriented workshop, the first in Kigali, Rwanda and the second in Prishtina, Kosovo. Working with locally based partners, the workshops were structured around a draft version of the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual' that had been developed through the OTJR/swisspeace roundtable discussions in Oxford and London. This allowed for direct feedback and input into the content and uses for the manual. Seventy participants attended the workshops, with representation from local and international Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), the civil service, current members of parliament and students and academics from across the two countries. Following these exchanges the manual was revised, published and launched as part of the Final Monitoring and Evaluation Meeting in Bern, Switzerland on 14th January 2014. • Output: Transitional Justice Methods Manual 4) Focusing on forms of knowledge enables interdisciplinary academic research • Finding: A focus on how the form through which knowledge on human rights abuse is exchanged and transferred allows for inter-disciplinary work in the field of transitional justice. • Activity: The papers prepared for the roundtable discussions were structured around the three research questions for the project that examined the different ways through which human rights violations are currently identified, the methods used to respond to them and the dominant and innovative approaches to examining the impact of these responses. In response to a competitive international call, a proposal to publish a selection of these papers as a Special Issue has been accepted by the Canadian Journal for Law and Society. • Output: Special Edition of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society (forth-coming 2015) |
| Exploitation Route | The project identified civil society and advocacy groups working on transitional justice and international criminal lawyers as the two major non-academic beneficiaries of the project's activities. The potential use of the project's outputs for each of these groups will be discussed in turn. First and foremost, the project has built a strong professional partnership with swisspeace, the collaborating civil society partner. This partnership across the academy and third sector created the foundation for the development of the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual'. The manual is specifically geared towards use by civil society groups and think tanks in non-academic contexts. All participants involved in the practice-oriented workshops have received an electronic copy of the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual'. There will be follow-up on how these participants make use of this publication. In addition, the workshops themselves have the potential to lead to the establishment of research streams in transitional countries, adding to the on-going capacity development of civil society. The OTJR network development has the potential to continue to enhance the exchange of knowledge between scholars, students and international criminal lawyers. Practising lawyers in international criminal law presented work and participated in the project roundtable discussions and seminars. These activities have led OTJR to arrange a further seminar with Xabier Agirre, Head of the Investigative Division in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. There is potential for these types of collaborations to continue. The exploitation routes are linked to the outcomes and activities that have been achieved in the four areas of influence discussed above. 1) The on-line platform provides the capacity to host on-going and future debates pertinent to the study and practice of transitional justice. In addition, the OTJR network has been solidified and developed over the course of the project. The partnerships with swisspeace, the Leuven Institute of Criminology at KU Leuven and Fondation Hirondelle, a Swiss NGO and media outlet, have resulted in the ongoing development of further grant applications. The website now provides a comprehensive record of all of the OTJRs activities since the groups inception in 2007 and offers a hub for retaining connections between participants involved in the OTJR activities. 2) Use of the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual' by civil society groups, think tanks and NGO's in post-conflict countries The dissemination of the methods manual in Rwanda led to a further workshop being organised by the Refugee Law Project in Gulu, northern Uganda. The publications of the manual and its distribution to all participants involved in the workshops in Rwanda and Kosovo and the manual launch hosted in Bern offers the opportunity for further deployment of the manual as a teaching and facilitating tool. 3) Enhancement of the academic impact of the Special Edition of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society The reputation of the journal and the fact that the proposal was selected from an open international call will enhance the reach and impact of the work within the academy. The profile of the Special Edition will be enhanced through a collaborative launch with the Leuven Institute of Criminology at KU Leuven, if a funding application to the Belgian Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences is successful. |
| Sectors | Education,Security and Diplomacy |
| URL | http://otjr.crim.ox.ac.uk |
| Description | The objectives of this project were: • To map the various methods and methodologies used to determine the occurrence of serious human rights violations and wider societal harm. • To exchange information and interrogate the praxis and underlying epistemologies of the legal and non-legal responses to serious human rights violations • To establish links between orthodox and more innovative approaches used to determine the practice and impact of transitional justice processes on individuals and broader societal structures. These objectives were achieved through an innovative knowledge exchange method that combined an online discussion forum with inter-disciplinary roundtables and public seminars, a set of practice-oriented workshops in post-conflict countries and a final evaluation and implementation meeting. The project led to four key findings: • Focusing on forms of knowledge enables interdisciplinary academic research • Workshops on methods and methodologies with civil society researchers and academics in transitional countries strengthens the development of practice-oriented training materials and highlights important ethical constraints when conducting research in post-conflict contexts. • A focus on research methods provides a productive avenue through which to assess policy decisions relating to responses to serious human right violations in conflict zones. • Research networks can be fostered through integrating web-based discussions with a series of research seminars and roundtable discussions. The project has led to three early impacts and one major future impact: 1) Civil Society and Academic partnership Impacts - The grant fostered key on-going international partnerships with swisspeace, a Swiss research institute with expertise on peace research, capacity building and practice based in Bern Switzerland; Fondation Hirondelle, a well-established and respected NGO comprising journalists and humanitarian aid professionals based in Geneva, Switzerland and academic researchers at the Institute of Criminology, KU Leuven based in Leuven, Belgium. 2) Career Development Impacts - The project facilitated the career development of the principal investigator (Dr. Nicola Palmer), the co-investigator (Dr. Briony Jones) and the post-doctoral researcher (Dr. Julia Viebach). Following the announcement of the award in August 2012, Dr. Palmer was appointed to a permanent academic post as lecturer in criminal law at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London. In this role Dr. Palmer has been a Theme Leader in the ESRC supported Doctoral Training Centre. Through the winning of the grant Dr. Briony Jones consolidated her position as Senior Researcher and since then has been invited to play more strategic and management roles at swisspeace for the development of the organisation's research profile. While in the role of post-doctoral research, Dr. Julia Viebach was awarded her doctoral degree from the University of Marburg. Following the completion of the grant she was appointed as a Career Development Lecturer at the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford and was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship and a Faculty of Law Research Support Fund. 3)Engagement Activities Impacts - The practice-oriented workshops in Rwanda and Kosovo and the publications of the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual' provided the catalyst for a series of on-going engagement activities led by both civil society actors and academics. First, the dissemination of the methods manual in Rwanda lead to a further workshop being organised by the Refugee Law Project in Gulu in northern Uganda. Second, following the completion of the grant swisspeace has used the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual' in a range of engagement activities including workshops in the Philippines and Switzerland. Finally, the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual' was included as one of the key teaching tools in the Essex Summer School in Human Rights on Research Methods The summer school was attended by 50 policy makers, NGO sector staff and students. Organisations included the International Criminal Court (ICC); UNHRC, OHCHR, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, the Danish Refugee Council, Freedom from Torture UK, the Association of Women for Research and Advocacy in Singapore, Open Society Justice Initiative, WHO in Geneva. Participants reported very positively on the training and on how it challenged their thinking on the methods current used in the designing, researching and implementing transitional justice. 1) Anticipated/Potential Future Impacts - The major future impact of this knowledge exchange project is the OTJR partnership with Fondation Hirondelle on developing and running an innovative on-line media platform, entitled: JusticeInfo.Net. This web-based platform will provide multimedia, multi-lingual real time coverage of transitional justice news, uncovering the facts, delving into background, and providing context, analysis and different perspectives and points of view. This platform will be a resource for journalists and a teaching tool as well as a news site, including interactive timelines, a transitional justice lexicon, biographies, and background information on conflict zones. OTJR's role will be to provide academic research contributions to the online platform. These contributions will include background information on conflicts, political parties, and transitional justice mechanisms, biographies of individuals, and analyses of central issues and themes in transitional justice. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2014 |
| Sector | Education,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Impact Types | Societal,Policy & public services |
| Description | Faculty of Law Research Support Fund |
| Amount | £2,100 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | RSF1314-61 |
| Organisation | University of Oxford |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 08/2014 |
| End | 10/2014 |
| Description | Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship |
| Amount | £30,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | ECF2014-233 |
| Organisation | The Leverhulme Trust |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2015 |
| End | 01/2018 |
| Description | Aegis Trust- Research, Policy and Higher Education partnership |
| Organisation | The Aegis Trust |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| PI Contribution | Dr Palmer is one of the lead mentors in a partnership developing Rwandan scholars working on transitional justice and post-conflict reconstruction. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The Aegis Trust has raised the funding to enable this knowledge exchange partnership and has taken the lead on all its activities. |
| Impact | The outputs are on-going. The collaborations includes input from sociology, law, theology, economics and educational studies. |
| Start Year | 2014 |
| Description | Collaboration with the Leuven Institute of Criminology |
| Organisation | University of Leuven |
| Department | Leuven Institute of Criminology |
| Country | Belgium |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Researcher at the Leuven Institute of Criminology participated in the 'Ways of Knowing after Atrocity' seminar series and are involved in developing a follow-up grant applications. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Attendance at seminars and contribution to on-going grant writing. |
| Impact | Engagement with the OTJR-swisspeace seminars and roundtable discussions. The seminars brought together scholars and practitioners in politics, law, literature, statistics, anthropology, history and development studies. |
| Start Year | 2013 |
| Description | Fondation Hirondelle |
| Organisation | Fondation Hirondelle |
| Country | Switzerland |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | OTJR is collaborating with Fondation Hirondelle on an up-coming project entitled: JusticeInfo.Net (JI). This web-based platform will provide multimedia, multi-lingual real time coverage of transitional justice news, uncovering the facts, delving into background, and providing context, analysis and different perspectives and points of view. The platform will be a resource for journalists and a teaching tool as well as a news site, including interactive timelines, a transitional justice lexicon, biographies, and background information. OTJR's role will be to provide academic research contributions to the online platform. To bridge the methodological divides between journalism and academia, OTJR will facilitate the provision of 3-4 articles per month for JI publication. These articles will include background information on conflicts, political parties, and transitional justice mechanisms, biographies of individuals, and analyses of central issues and themes in transitional justice. They will be published on the JI web-based platform. The process will run as follows: i) the request will come in from JI's editor-in-chief to the OTJR Convenor; ii) the OTJR Convenor, in conjunction with the OTJR committee, will write to our panelists on that subject with the terms of the request; iii) on receipt of the piece from the expert, the OTJR chief editor will edit it - this might entail some back and forth with the contributor; iv) the OTJR committee and Convenor will sign off on the piece and refer it to OTJR Advisory Board members Dr Nicola Palmer and Dr Phil Clark; v) The Advisors will additionally sign off on the piece; vi) The Convenor will send the piece to the JI Editor-in-Chief. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Fondation Hirondelle is a well-established and respected NGO comprising journalists and humanitarian aid professionals. It aims to establish or support independent, civic-minded news media in conflict, post-conflict, and crisis zones. It is based in Switzerland, employs 213 staff, and has an operating budget of CHF 9 million. Institutional donors provide the vast majority of that budget. Since 1995, Fondation Hirondelle has created or supported 12 radio stations in conflict or post-conflict societies. Fondation Hirondelle is leading this project in terms of fund-raising, web-design, journalistic content and promotion. OTJR is offering academic support and content. Our principal contact at Fondation Hirondelle is Caroline Vuillemin, the Chief Operations Officer. Fondation Hirondelle has also engaged an external consultant on the project, Pierre Hazan, a journalist and professor at the Geneva Centre for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action. |
| Impact | This in an multi-disciplinary collaboration between journalists and academics working and writing on transitional justice. Engagement activities: OTJR's partnership in the project was launched in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 20 November 2014 at an event entitled '20 Years of Transitional Justice in Africa'. One of the invited speakers was the new OTJR Convenor, Ms. Leila Ullrich. |
| Start Year | 2014 |
| Description | swisspeace collaboration |
| Organisation | Swiss Peace Foundation |
| Country | Switzerland |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Swisspeace - a Swiss research institute with expertise on peace research, capacity building and practice, has been building a long-term collaboration with Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) - a network of staff and students at the University of Oxford. |
| Collaborator Contribution | swisspeace has hosted seminars, workshops, published the practioner-oriented transitional justice methods manual and has contributed to the editing and writing of the Special Issue of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society (forthcoming 2015) |
| Impact | 1) From January 2013 to January 2014, OTJR and its civil society partner swisspeace, in collaboration with the Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College, London and the Leuven Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, KU Leuven, hosted 12 public seminars and 8 roundtable discussions. These events were multi-disciplinary with scholars and practitioners from politics, law, literature, statistics, anthropology, history and development studies. 2) On the 16th-17th July and 18th- 19th September 2013, OTJR and swisspeace hosted two practice-oriented workshop, the first in Kigali, Rwanda and the second in Prishtina, Kosovo. These events were multi-disciplinary, with scholars, practitioners and policy makers from politics, law, history and development studies. 3) Members of swisspeace contributed to the writing of the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual'. This publication was multi-disciplinary with scholars and practitioners from politics, law, literature, statistics, anthropology, history and development studies. 4) Members of swisspeace contributed to the writing and editing of the Special Issue of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society (forthcoming 2015). This publication will be multi-disciplinary with scholars and practitioners from politics, law, literature, statistics, anthropology, history and development studies. 5) swisspeace has used the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual' in a range of engagement activities that have extended well beyond the completion of the grant, these include workshops in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Philippines and Switzerland. |
| Start Year | 2013 |
| Title | OTJR website and on-line debate platform |
| Description | The OTJR website was redesigned to incorporate an online debate platform. This enabled a dynamic exchange between acadmics and policy makers that included comments from the general public. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2013 |
| Impact | The new platform enabled the first an on-line debate examining the role of international monitors, such as the UN Group of Experts or human rights groups, in reporting on mass conflict. The discussion centred on donor responses to recent military activities in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Jason K. Stearns, director of the Rift Valley Institute's Usalama Project debated with Phil Clark, Lecturer in Comparative and International Politics at SOAS, University of London. The discussion ran from March until July 2013 and included moderation and guest commentaries from leading academics and policy think tanks. During this period the website was viewed by 3186 individual users, with the majority of web traffic coming from the United Kingdom, Rwanda, the United States of America, Switzerland, Belgium, Kenya, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, United Arab Emirates and Australia. |
| URL | http://otjr.crim.ox.ac.uk/index.php/debates/Debates/20-test-debate-debating-on-the-website.html |
| Description | Final Evaluation and Implementation Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | As the opening to the Final Evaluation and Implementation Workshop, swisspeace, in collaboration with Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) and partners at King's College London (KCL), launched of a new practice-oriented 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual'. The manual was launched in Bern, Switzerland on 14 January 2014 at a panel discussion on the nexus between academic and advocacy research in transitional justice. The panel was hosted by Nicola Palmer and brought into conversation, Roger Duthie, Pierre Hazan, and Mina Rauschenbach. Tracking the structure of the methods manual itself, the three panellists at the launch offered their professional and personal reflections on their entry point into working on transitional justice. They then discussed their motivation for using a particular research method providing reflections on the work's underlying methodology and epistemology, alongside reflections on the major ethical challenges that face the current research and practice of transitional justice. Attendees at the event indicated that they were planning to use the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual' in their teaching. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | OTJR Roundtable Discussion launching 'Ways of Knowing Atrocity' |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | The roundtable sparked extensive discussion and a research group member wrote a blog post about the discussion. The roundtable was the first of a series of discussions over 12 months that allowed for a sustained enquiry into the current methods used to design, implement and research responses to atrocity. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://oxfordtransitionaljustice.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/otjr-launches-the-one-year-project-entitle... |
| Description | OTJR Roundtable Discussion with Antjie Krog |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | The roundtable sparked extensive discussion and a research group member wrote a blog post about the discussion. The content of the roundtable was included, in summary, in the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual', one of the major outputs of the grant which was subsequently used in the practice-oriented workshops in Rwanda and Kosovo and in a series of follow-up activities led by the project's civil society partner swisspeace. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://oxfordtransitionaljustice.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/roundtable-discussion-of-the-esrc-project-... |
| Description | OTJR Roundtable Discussion with Bert Ingelaere |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | The roundtable sparked extensive discussion and a research group member wrote a blog post about the discussion. The content of the roundtable was included, in summary, in the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual', one of the major outputs of the grant which was subsequently used in the practice-oriented workshops in Rwanda and Kosovo and in a series of follow-up activities led by the project's civil society partner swisspeace. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://oxfordtransitionaljustice.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/roundtable-discussion-of-the-esrc-project-... |
| Description | OTJR Roundtable Discussion with Hirad Abtahi |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | The roundtable sparked extensive discussion and a research group member wrote a blog post about the discussion. The content of the roundtable was included, in summary, in the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual', one of the major outputs of the grant which was subsequently used in the practice-oriented workshops in Rwanda and Kosovo and in a series of follow-up activities led by the project's civil society partner swisspeace. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://oxfordtransitionaljustice.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/hirad-abtahi-from-the-international-crimin... |
| Description | OTJR Roundtable Discussion with Megan Price |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | The roundtable sparked extensive discussion and a research group member wrote a blog post about the discussion. The content of the roundtable was included, in summary, in the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual', one of the major outputs of the grant which was subsequently used in the practice-oriented workshops in Rwanda and Kosovo and in a series of follow-up activities led by the project's civil society partner swisspeace. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://oxfordtransitionaljustice.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/roundtable-discussion-of-the-esrc-project-... |
| Description | OTJR Roundtable Discussion with Mina Rauschenbach |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | The talk sparked extensive discussion, a research group member wrote a blog post about the discussion and the podcast as been repeatedly downloaded. The content of the roundtable was included, in summary, in the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual', one of the major outputs of the grant which was subsequently used in the practice-oriented workshops in Rwanda and Kosovo and in a series of follow-up activities led by the projects civil society partner swisspeace. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013,2014 |
| URL | http://oxfordtransitionaljustice.wordpress.com/tag/methods-and-methodologies/ |
| Description | OTJR Roundtable Discussion with Nancy Combs |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | The roundtable sparked extensive discussion. OTJR members wrote a blog post on the talk. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013,2014 |
| URL | http://oxfordtransitionaljustice.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/roundtable-discussion-of-the-esrc-project-... |
| Description | OTJR Roundtable Discussion with Simon Robins |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | The talk sparked extensive discussion and an OTJR research group member wrote a blog post about the discussion. The content of the roundtable was included, in summary, in the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual', one of the major outputs of the grant which was subsequently used in the practice-oriented workshops in Rwanda and Kosovo and in a series of follow-up activities led by the projects civil society partner swisspeace. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013,2014 |
| URL | http://oxfordtransitionaljustice.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/roundtable-discussion-of-the-esrc-project-... |
| Description | OTJR Seminar: A critical approach to the perspective of individuals indicted at the ICTY |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This seminar formed part of the OTJR/swisspeace seminar series. The talk sparked extensive discussion. Speaker: Dr. Mina Rauschenbach - Research Fellow, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, University of Geneva Abstract: Various explanatory perspectives focus on the different factors leading to mass crime. Some relate to the structural (social, political and ideological) factors, whereas others concern the social-psychological processes related to identity and social categorization (in-group solidarity and out-group antipathy), emotions or feelings (fear, insecurity, resentment), as well as social influence processes (obedience, conformity and submission to in-group norms). The findings presented here stem from a broader interdisciplinary research project aiming at contributing to the evaluation of the legitimacy of international criminal justice. 18 interviews were carried with individuals accused by the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia for international crimes they committed personally or in which they were involved indirectly. Using a critical approach to their analysis, we demonstrate how their reconstructions of involvement are shaped by the social role, identity and relations the speaker refers to, as well as by the social context of the communicative situation. Our findings reveal that these individuals are not morally ignorant. Yet, they also support the claim that criminal accountability measures should consider the social processes underlying the normative changes which can pave the way for involvement in international crimes. The talk sparked extensive discussion and the content of the work was included, in summary, in the Transitional Justice Methods Manual, one of the major outputs of the grant. The speaker participated in the launch of the Transitional Justice Methods Manual hosted by swisspeace in Bern, Switzerland. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/socleg/otjr_seminars/2013-05-27-socleg-otjr-rauschenbach.mp3 |
| Description | OTJR Seminar: Do bones have politics? Forensic knowledge, human remains and the politics of the past |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Speaker: Dr. Claire Moon, Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology and the Human Rights Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science. The talk sparked extensive discussion. Abstract This paper engages with a set of problems that arise when science tries to settle questions of social and political significance. On a general level the paper addresses some of the ways in which the dead register in political life. More specifically, it evaluates the performance of forensic knowledge in settling contesting interpretations of past state violence. What the paper argues, against some of the claims made by the field of forensic anthropology, is that forensic truths do not settle the past but take their place within social, political and historical interpretations by which past violence is renegotiated and reinterpreted, in ways that are both conflicted and unpredictable. In order to make this argument the paper shows how the professionalization of forensic anthropological work in human rights is coterminous, temporally, with a particular set of political and legal conditions within and due to which the field has flourished, and looks at how these conditions have framed the particular claims made by the profession. It identifies distinctive 'faiths' of the field as scientific, probative, humanitarian, historical, political and deterrent, and shows how these are underpinned by a set of legal-scientific definitions, practices, technologies and materialities which impact upon how human rights and the politics of the past is thought, practiced and administered. It also shows how these faiths are intimately entwined with the characteristic claims of the field (both the knowledge and practice) of transitional justice. Further, the paper posits human remains as 'boundary objects' (Star and Greisemer, 1989) in order to argue that claims made by forensic anthropologists conceal a range of contests and conflicts around the social, political, legal and scientific significance of human remains in which multiple social agents are differently invested. The paper illustrates such conflicts with reference to the determination of the crime of genocide and to exhumations in Argentina. In summary, the paper examines some of the ways in which forensic work is embedded within a network of actors, artifacts and institutions that have different stakes in the interpretation of the past in order to historicise the central techniques of knowledge by which transitional justice is arbitrated and legitimized, and to demonstrate the indivisibility of scientific claims from the social and political contexts within science is operative, and upon which it claims to act with finality. The podcast as been repeatedly downloaded and the talk led to the development of a journal article currently under review with the Canadian Journal of Law and Society. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/socleg/otjr_seminars/2013-06-11-socleg-otjr-moon.mp3 |
| Description | OTJR Seminar: Fact finding Without Facts: The Uncertain Evidentiary Foundations of International Criminal Convictions |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This seminar formed part of the OTJR/swisspeace seminar series. Speaker: Professor Nancy Combs, Vice Dean and Professor of Law, Director of the Human Security Law Center, and Director of the Madrid Summer Law Program, William & Mary Law School Following the talk the pod-cast was downloaded regularly. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/socleg/otjr/2013-03-05-socleg-otjr-combs.mp3 |
| Description | OTJR Seminar: From victims to actors: Participatory approaches to transitional justice in Nepal |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | This seminar formed part of the OTJR/swisspeace seminar series. The talk sparked extensive discussion, a research group member wrote a blog post about the discussion and the content of the work was included, in summary, in the Transitional Justice Methods Manual, one of the major outputs of the grant. http://oxfordtransitionaljustice.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/roundtable-discussion-of-the-esrc-project-ways-of-knowing-atrocity-with-dr-simon-robins/ Speaker: Dr. Simon Robins - Humanitarian Practitioner and Associate, Post War Reconstruction and Development Unit, University of York Abstract: The discourse of transitional justice has emerged as a response to the needs of societies emerging from conflict or political violence and has become one of the preferred lenses through which to examine democratising states. Transitional justice processes and the mechanisms through which they work tend however to be prescriptive and top-down: they are created by elites, supported by an international community remote from the context and from indigenous understandings. There remains a dearth of praxis that interrogates the idea of a transitional justice driven by the grassroots. This study investigates victim mobilisation: one of the few ways in which the views of those most impacted by the legacies of violence can challenge such prescriptive approaches and impact in a transitional context. The bulk of victims of Nepal's conflict are poor and socially excluded, live in rural areas far from the capital, lack education and are ignorant of their rights. Social movements of conflict victims constitute one of the few routes to increasing victim agency in a transition which largely ignores them. This study attempts to understand how victims' understandings of their needs of transition diverge from those of elites, and the frames they use to both articulate their demands and around which they mobilise. This paper reports data from participatory action research undertaken with and by families of persons disappeared during Nepal's conflict, through an engagement with locally organised family associations. An effort is made to understand both the challenges and possibilities of victim mobilisation as a strategy to ensure agency of the most marginalised in a transitional justice process, and the remoteness of much of the elite agenda from victims' concerns. The talk sparked extensive discussion, a research group member wrote a blog post about the discussion and the podcast as been repeatedly downloaded. The talk led to the development of a paper currently under review with the Canadian Journal of Law and Society. The talk led to further e-mail contact between the speaker and the Open Society initiative who are starting to undertake work in Nepal. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/socleg/otjr_seminars/2013-05-21-socleg-otjr-robins.mp3 |
| Description | OTJR Seminar: Making sense of past atrocities: Toward methodologies of haunting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Speaker: Dr. Akin Akinwumi, Researcher, Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University The talk sparked extensive discussion. Abstract In this talk, Dr. Akin Akinwumi will build on his research on the now iconic South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SATRC) to show how transitional justice scholarship and practice ought to embrace more innovative methodological pathways and tools. Whilst the overall goal of his research into the SATRC was to draw analytic attention to the will to transform at the heart of the process, the project also represented an attempt to unsettle the assumptions of finality or closure associated with transitional justice. In the talk he will suggest that there has been a tendency to quickly draw a line under truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) once their mandates have been completed and official reports made public. In fact, as he will further point out, the tendency to see TRC processes as final or at least finalizing is more or less implicit in the research methods we favour (ethnography, interviews, statistics, and so on) and the ways we analyze data. His argument is that the methods used to formulate, implement, and assess transitional justice processes like TRCs ought to resist notions of finality or closure. In Ghostly Matters, Avery Gordon deploys the notion of "haunting" to stir the sociological imagination in new directions. Haunting is presented as "a very particular way of knowing what has happened or is happening" (2008: 8). This way of knowing follows Gordon's view that a ghost "imports a charged strangeness into the place or sphere that it is haunting, thus unsettling the proprietary and property lines that delimit a zone of activity or knowledge" (p. 63). Gesturing toward the spirit of Gordon's work, Dr. Akin Akinwumi will be proposing the use of haunting as a methodological tool for turning a critical eye on the pervasive finalizing outlook of TRC processes. Dr. Akin Akinwumi will suggest that atrocities disrupt linear succession and thus pose a serious challenge to the prevalent idea of making a clean break from the past - not merely in the everyday sense but also in research terms. In light of this perspective, he will suggest that being attentive to the troubled, incomplete, and haunted nature of TRC processes invites a more careful reading of TRC-related research data. Dr. Akin Akinwumi will make a case for the adoption of an open-ended methodological approach to interpreting the historical particularities of atrocities as well as official responses to them. Taking this sort of approach, he will suggest, broadens the landscape of transitional justice scholarship and practice to encompass how past atrocities make their presence felt and known beyond the timeline of TRC activities. Even more, this sort of approach allows transitional justice scholars and practitioners to approach research data on atrocities in a recursive fashion and thereby embrace new opportunities for knowing and analyzing transitional justice mechanisms and their impacts. The podcast has been repeatedly downloaded. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/socleg/otjr_seminars/2013-10-29-socleg-otjr-akinwumi.mp3 |
| Description | OTJR Seminar: Measuring criminal accountability for past human rights violation in the South Cone: Databases on judicial activity in Argentina, Chile and Peru |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Speaker: Lorena Balardini, Co-ordinator of Research, Centre of Legal and Social Studies, Argentina The talk sparked extensive discussion Abstract This presentation will focus on a project that has involved the development of statistical tools for monitoring processes of criminal justice for crimes against humanity in Latin America by a domestic NGO from Argentina, the Centre of Legal and Social Studies (CELS). Since the early 2000s the region is facing a process of re-opening of criminal cases for crimes committed by military rule during the seventies and eighties, in the framework of a wider turn to accountability for past crimes that include other transitional justice mechanisms. The first part will address the political context that contributed to its development and its diffusion to other Latin American processes (since 2009, this tool has been replicated by civil society actors from Chile, Peru and Uruguay). The second part will refer to the methodological aspects regarding the design of the databases and the production of data: variables, scope, sources of information, data-collection. Practical and ethical aspects regarding the production of this data will be also addressed: the importance of a flexible design, issues on data confidentiality, data preservation and the possibility of this design to be replicated in other contexts. The final part will address the most important findings of the project, nationally and regionally, by a series of graphics which illustrate the current status as well as the evolution of the Argentine criminal process for crimes against humanity between 2006 and 2012. The point here will be the influence the project has had in the advocacy strategies implemented by CELS to enhance the process and influence the authorities in charge. Some comparative findings that are the result of a joint work with the projects from Chile, Peru and Uruguay will also be presented, to illustrate the flexibility of the design and its potential to adapt to other national contexts in which these crimes are being investigated. The event led to on-going exchanges with the Latin American Centre, University of Oxford |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/socleg/otjr_seminars/2013-10-22-socleg-otjr-balardini.mp3 |
| Description | OTJR Seminar: Of other spaces: Analysing memorials to mass violence through Foucault's notion of Heterotopia |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Speaker: Prof. Susanne Buckley-Zistel, Director of the Center for Conflict Studies, Philipps-University of Marburg The talk sparked extensive discussion and led to on-going research exchanges. Abstract As representation of past atrocities memorials and memorial museums connect past, present and future in non-linear ways. Located in the here and now, they suggest and encourage particular interpretations of the past with view to an anticipation of a specific future. Based on the notions of heterotopia as introduced by Michel Foucault the paper analyses the role and function of memorials in transitional justice processes. Heterotopia refers to 'other spaces' or spaces of otherness, i.e. spaces that exist parallel to reality and that, at the same time, question and challenge this reality. In this sense, museums or memorials to commemorate atrocities constitute spaces where objects from other spaces (and times) - in our cases related to the experience of massive human rights abuses - are displayed so that they continue to exist in time, yet also outside of time. They seek to preserve objects from another time for today as well as for the future. In the context of transitional justice processes the portrayed past might run counter to hegemonic discourses about how the past should be remembered officially and thus constitute a room for dissent and discord. The discussion and the podcast as been repeatedly downloaded. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/socleg/otjr_seminars/2013-10-15-socleg-otjr-zistel.mp3 |
| Description | OTJR Seminar: TJ Methods Manual Re-Launch: Legal, Narrative and Artistic Approaches to Transitional Justice |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Speakers: Dr Nicola Palmer (Lecturer in Criminal Law, KCL) Dr Zoe Norridge (Lecturer in English and Comparative Literature, KCL) Dr Phil Clark (Reader in Comparative and International Politics, SOAS) The launch of the 'Transitional justice methods manual' in Oxford sparked questions and discussion. Aftert the talk, downloads of the Manual from the OTJR and swisspeace websites increased. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://otjr.crim.ox.ac.uk/index.php/events/seminar/407-esrc-transitional-justice-research-manual-re-... |
| Description | Oxford Transitional Justice Research and swisspeace Seminar Series: Peasants, power and the past: The Gacaca courts and Rwanda's transition from below |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Speaker: Dr. Bert Ingelaere (Research Fellow, Institute of Development Policy and Management, University of Antwerp) The seminar sparked extensive discussion and allowed for a sustained enquiry into the current methods used to design, implement and research responses to atrocity. This seminar led by Bert Ingelaere discussed the use of a mixed-methods to examine the transitional justice processes pursued in Rwanda, arguing it provided a means of understanding of transitions from below. The talk led to the development of a journal article currently under review with the Canadian Journal of Law and Society. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013,2014 |
| URL | http://otjr.crim.ox.ac.uk/index.php/events/Seminar/163-the-impact-of-mass-violence-and-post-conflict... |
| Description | Oxford Transitional Justice Research and swisspeace Seminar Series: The South African statesman and his prophet: a relook at aspects of vocabulary and tolerance after a period of Transitional Justice |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The seminar series aimed at identifying the gaps and synergies in the way of knowing transitional justice. The seminars allowed for a sustained inquiry into the current methods used to design, implement and research responses to atrocity. This seminar led by Antjie Krog explored vocabularies used after atrocities. The seminar argued that researching the vocabulary used in transitions is a way of knowing responses to atrocities. The talk led to the development of a journal article currently under review with the Canadian Journal of Law and Society. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://otjr.crim.ox.ac.uk/index.php/events/Seminar/161-the-south-african-statesman-and-his-prophet-a... |
| Description | Oxford Transitional Justice Research and swisspeace Seminar Series: The limitations of knowing via observation |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Speaker(s): Dr. Megan Price (Director of Research, Human Rights Data Analysis Group) The seminars sparked extensive discussion and contributed to a sustained enquiry into the current methods used to design, implement and research responses to atrocity. Abstract Emerging technology has provided us new ways to record and publicize observed human rights violations. But we remain limited by what is observable, and many human rights violations are either unobserved or unrecorded. When we treat observed, recorded violations as the only violations that occur, we not only misinterpret patterns of violations, we also do a disservice to victims' whose stories have not yet been told. The data we often have access to in human rights research are convenience samples - samples which include an unknown proportion of the population and which have an unknown relationship to the population. Such data are insufficient to support answers to questions of interest, such as "Is violence increasing or decreasing?" "Has more violence occurred in this region or that region?" Fortunately, the statistical method multiple systems estimation (MSE) provides a way to model the observation process and thus answer such questions through appropriate statistical inference. This lecture will present examples from the Human Rights Data Analysis Group's various projects to illustrate why drawing statistical inference from a single convenience sample is inappropriate and to highlight results of several MSE analyses. The seminar series aimed at identifying the gaps and synergies in the way of knowing transitional justice. T The seminar led by Megan Price examined quantitative methods so as to assess human rights violations. The seminar argued for the use of Multi-System Estimation (MSE) as a statistical means to take account of human rights violations that may not have been reported to fact-finding groups. The talk led to the development of a journal article currently under review with the Canadian Journal of Law and Society. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://otjr.crim.ox.ac.uk/index.php/events/Seminar/162-the-limitations-of-knowing-via-observation.ht... |
| Description | Oxford Transitional Justice Research and swisspeace Seminar Series: Types of Injury in Inter-State Reparation Claims: a Victim Oriented Approach |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The seminar series aimed at identifying the gaps and synergies in the way of knowing transitional justice. The seminars allowed for a sustained enquiry into the current methods used to design, implement and research responses to atrocity and sparked extensive discussion. The seminar led by Hirad Abtahi identified several types of injuries in inter-state reparation claims to aid in informing the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in regard to reparation claims. The seminar argued for a victim-centred approach and drew on a wide range of cases within the broad scope of Public International Law. The talk supported a growing interest in international criminal law at King's College London and a course is now offered on the LLM entitled 'International and transnational criminal law'. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://otjr.crim.ox.ac.uk/index.php/events/Seminar/54-types-of-injury-in-inter-state-reparation-clai... |
| Description | Practice-Oriented Workshop, Kigali |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | The practice-oriented workshops provided research tools and built capacity for the domestic practice of, and research into, transitional justice. Moreover, the workshops disseminated and discussed the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual', one of the key outputs of the grant aimed at narrowing the gap between how transitional justice is researched and how it is practiced. The results of the workshop discussions were incorporated into the revised version of the Manual. The dissemination of the methods manual in Rwanda led to a further workshop being organised by the Refugee Law Project in Gulu, northern Uganda. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | Practice-Oriented Workshop, Prishtina |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | The practice-oriented workshops provided research tools and built capacity for the domestic practice of, and research into, transitional justice. Moreover, the workshops disseminated and discussed the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual', one of the key outputs of the grant aimed at narrowing the gap between how transitional justice is researched and how it is practiced. The results of the workshop discussions were incorporated into the revised version of the Manual. Following the workshop, Dr Nicola Palmer was invited by the United Nations Development Programme in Kosovo to attend an international conference on 11 October 2012 to speak on 'History, Truth-telling and documentation'. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://oxfordtransitionaljustice.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/reflecting-on-the-ways-of-knowing-atrocity... |
| Description | swisspeace roundtable in Bern |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | On 10th June 2014 swisspeace held a roundtableat the swisspeace offices in Bern on 'The United Nations, the State and Local Approaches to Dealing with the Past in the African Great Lakes Region: Implications for Sustainable Peacebuilding' where we had participants who were academics and NGO employees. The Methods Manual was made available to participants and stimulated conversation and discussion. swisspeace elected to continue to use the Transitional Justice Methods Manual in its activities and is exploring the possibility of building an application for further research off the broad basis created by this ESRC Knowledge Exchange. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | swisspeace: Workshop in Bosnia-Herzegovina |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | From 13th - 14th March 2014 the ESRC project and the Transitional Justice Methods Manual were presented at a workshop on memory and history in Bosnia-Herzegovina, part of a Swiss National Science Foundation funded project linking the University of Zürich with the University of Sarajevo. Bosnian and Swiss scholars attended the event and there was a lively discussion and questions relating to the Manual following the event. After the workshop, swisspeace elected to continue to use the Manual in there training activities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | swisspeace: Workshop in Manila |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | From 27th - 31st January swisspeace organised a Regional Dealing with the Past Workshop in Manila where the Transitional Justice Methods Manual was provided for participants so that it could feed it into the discussions. The workshop was attended by NGOs and policy makers and the manual sparked questions and contributions. After the workshop, swisspeace decided to continue to use the 'Transitional Justice Methods Manual' in future workshops with NGO participants. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | swisspeace: roundtable in Bern |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | On 23rd May 2014 swisspeace roundtable held at the swisspeace offices in Bern on 'Réconciliation et développement local dans l'Ouest Ivoirien: Complémentarité ou opposition entre acteurs locaux et internationaux?' where we had participants who were academics, NGO employees, policy makers. The Transitional Justice Methods Manual was distributed and sparked conversation among the delegates. Following the roundtable, swisspeace elected to continue to use the methods manual in their on-going work. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |