Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand's Book Prize
Dr Lauren Dempster
The book authored by Mitchell Institute Fellow Dr Lauren Dempster and Dr Rachel Killean (University of Sydney) Green Transitional Justice (Routledge, 2025) has been awarded the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand's Book Prize.
The Book Prize is awarded for the most outstanding contribution to the field of law and society by an Australian or New Zealand scholar or a scholar whose submitted work has a focus on these jurisdictions. The authors each receive a certificate and one monetary award of $AUD200.
Green Transitional Justice examines the relationship between transitional justice, mass violence, and environmental harm. The starting point of the book is the authors’ contention that transitional justice, as a field ‘associated with a society’s attempts to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses’ should seek to recognise and address the multi-faceted and often harmful relationship between mass violence and Nature that is currently relatively overlooked in the field.
Read Lauren’s associated blog about the book here.
Dr Lauren Dempster is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law, Queen's University Belfast and Mitchell Institute Fellow: Rights and Social Justice. Lauren's research is in the field of transitional justice, with particular focus on the disappeared and responses to disappearance, conflict-related environmental harm, victim mobilisation, and efforts to address the legacy of the Northern Ireland conflict. Lauren currently holds an AHRC Fellowship on Forensic Scientists and Knowledge Production in Transitional Justice.
Dr Rachel Killean is a Senior Lecturer and the current Associate Dean for Student Life in Sydney Law School. Before taking up this post in 2022, she was a Senior Lecturer in Queen's University Belfast. Her research interests focus on transitional justice and International Criminal Law, in particular sexual and gender-based violence, victims’ rights and victimology, ecocide, conflict-related environmental harm and Rights of Nature. Rachel is currently Chief Investigator on the project, The Khmer Rouge on Trial: Reflecting on the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia with the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre.