Speaker: Professor Anne-Marie McAlinden (QUB)

Chair:     Professor Louise Mallinder (QUB)

This seminar will examine the findings from a recently published monograph -Transforming Justice Responses to Non-recent Institutional Abuses (Oxford University Press, 2025) – where Anne-Marie was the lead author (with Marie Keenan (University College Dublin) and James Gallen (Dublin College University)).

The analysis is based on a comprehensive review of the interdisciplinary literature (eg law, political science, history, criminology and social policy); media analysis within the island of Ireland, North and South; comparative documentary analysis of inquiries/investigations, redress schemes and apologies across a range of Anglophone and non-Anglophone countries globally; as well as extensive primary research - 74 interviews with key stakeholders, including victim/survivors, church and state actors, and legal professionals, across the island of Ireland.

Drawing on the literature related to restorative justice, transitional justice, and transformative justice, the book advances a re-imagined approach to justice which seeks to improve justice processes and outcomes.

The seminar will explore a number of key themes including:

• New definition of ‘non-recent institutional abuses’
• Complexities of the legal, historical, political, cultural and institutional contexts
• Reframing ‘responsibility’ and ‘accountability’
• Proposals for reform – including legal culture; inquiries and ‘truth’; and reparations and redress

Read more about the monograph here.

Professor Anne-Marie McAlinden

 Anne-Marie McAlinden is a Mitchell Institute Fellow and Professor of Law and Criminal Justice at Queen’s University Belfast.  She is the author/editor of six books, including four monographs, two of which were awarded major book prizes.  She has provided expert advice to the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Sexual Abuse and the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales.  Her research formed the basis of the first state apology to survivors of institutional abuses in Northern Ireland.  She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Professor Louise Mallinder

Louise Mallinder is Deputy Director of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security, and Justice and a Professor of Law and at Queen’s University Belfast.  At the University of Chicago she is a Faculty Affiliate of the Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts, and was the 2024 Pozen Professor of Human Rights.  She holds a PhD in law, an LLM in human rights law, and BA in economic and social history and politics, all from Queen’s University Belfast.  Her book Amnesty, Human Rights and Political Transitions: Bridging the Peace and Justice Divide was awarded the British Society of Criminology Book Prize and the Hart Socio-Legal Studies Association Early Career Prize.  She is co-editing The Elgar Concise Encyclopedia on Law and Peace, and co-authored Lawyers in Conflict and Transition (2022).

She is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of the Higher Education Academy.  She is also a member of the Institute for Integrated Transitions Law and Peace Practice Group, and of the ESRC and AHRC Peer Review Colleges.  She was Chair of the Committee on the Administration of Justice, a human rights non-governmental organization based in Belfast, during 2015-2020, and was Vice-Chair during 2013-2015 and 2020-2024.