University of Ulster

Faculty Member, Transitional Justice Institute

Lecturer in Human Rights and International Law

About

Dr Louise Mallinder is a lecturer in human rights and international law at the Transitional Justice Institute (TJI). She has also been appointed TJI’s ‘Dealing with the Past’ research coordinator. She previously worked at Queen’s University Belfast as a research fellow, with Prof Kieran McEvoy and Prof Brice Dickson, on a two-year AHRC-funded research project entitled 'Beyond Legalism: Amnesties, Transition and Conflict Transformation'. This interdisciplinary, comparative study of amnesty laws in Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, South Africa, Uganda and Uruguay, included fieldwork in these jurisdictions.
Louise has been awarded a BA in economic and social history and politics (2001), LLM in Human Rights Law (2003) and a PhD in Law (2006) from Queen’s University Belfast. She has published her doctoral thesis as 'Amnesty, Human Rights and Political Transitions: Bridging the Peace and Justice Divide' (Hart Publishing, 2008) and this monograph was awarded the 2009 Hart SLSA Early Career Award and was jointly awarded the 2009 British Society of Criminology Book Prize.

During her research on amnesty laws, Louise has developed the Amnesty Law Database, which currently contains information on over 520 amnesty laws in 138 countries since the end of World War Two. She is currently working on the final edits to this database and hopes to make it freely available online during 2012. In the meantime, she is happy to respond to queries on the database or individual amnesty processes.

Currently, Louise is running the Amnesty Guidelines Project, with Prof Tom Hadden. This project, which is funded by the Nuffield Foundation, brings together scholars and practitioners from around the world to develop guidelines on the use of amnesty laws in conflict and transitional states (for more information see http://www.transitionaljustice.ulster.ac.uk/TransitionalJusticeInstitute.htmAmnestyGuidelinesProject.htm). In addition, drawing her experience with the Amnesty Law Database, Louise, together with Dr Catherine O’Rourke, is leading an interdisciplinary project on the Role of Databases in Transitional Justice Research funded by the Socio-Legal Studies Association (for more information see http://www.transitionaljustice.ulster.ac.uk/current%20projects/Databases.htm).
In addition, Louise, together with Prof Kieran McEvoy (lead investigator) and Marny Requa, has been awarded funding the ESRC for a project on Lawyers, Conflict and Transition. This project is due to start in June 2012 (for more information see http://www.transitionaljustice.ulster.ac.uk/TransitionalJusticeInstitute.htmLawyersConflictandTransition.htm).
In addition to her scholarly research, Louise is Treasurer of the Committee on the Administration of Justice, a leading human rights organisation in Northern Ireland and a co-vice chair of the American Society of International Law Working Group on Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law. She has also advised a range of policymakers and activists on transitional justice and rule of law internationally and in a number of countries.

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