Core Team

Professor John Barry, Professor Cheryl Lawther, Professor Kieran McEvoy, Dr Keira Williams

Themes members are focused on the relationship between human rights, social justice, conflict and peace-making both locally here in Northern Ireland but also internationally.  Our research is premised on the idea that the protection of human rights and the promotion of social justice are crucial to resolving conflict and preventing violence.  We examine how threats to human rights and social justice are impacted by war, conflict, terrorism and political violence, genocide, environmental destruction, poverty, racial discrimination and a range of other factors.  We take an expansive view of human rights and social justice which explicitly includes a focus on the climate crisis and the existential threat posed to the planet.  Our analysis is not only focused on law, or the intersection between law and politics but also on how struggles for rights and social justice are represented artistically and culturally.