We are pleased to announce that Prof Siobhán Wills will be taking over as Director of the Transitional Justice Institute from 1 October 2021. Siobhán is a Professor of Law who joined the Law School and TJI in 2013.
Siobhán is internationally recognised for her world-leading research on peacekeeping, international and human rights law.
In particular Siobhán has been a leader in developing human rights research and advocacy using film. Her award-winning films It Stays With You and Right Now I Want to Scream (co-director Cahal McLaughlin QUB) examine human rights violations by UN forces in Haiti and police in Brazil and puts front and centre the voice of those whose rights have been violated.
Siobhán has published widely in top tier- journals and publishing houses including a foundational text on law and peacekeeping Protecting Civilians: The Obligations of Peacekeepers (Oxford 2009) and more recently The Law and Practice of Peacekeeping: Foregrounding Human Rights (Cambridge 2021), with Rosa Fredman and Nicolas Lemy-Hébert.
Siobhán’s research has been supported by grants from, among others, the British Academy and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Siobhán’s LLB is from the National University of Ireland, 2000; her LLM from Yale Law School, 2001; her DPhil from Oxford University, 2007.
On this new role, Siobhán says:
I am delighted to be taking up the role of TJI Director and look forward to supporting the work of TJI’s world-class team of scholars, PhD researchers and LLM students, and our partners in policy and practice. Our aim is to better understand and address the current serious challenges to human rights, justice and accountability, in a context of increased racism and violence globally and at home.
Siobhán succeeds Prof Catherine O’Rourke who is taking up the Chair in Global Law at Durham University. Catherine led the TJI since February 2020 and steered it through the shift to online research activity in the midst of a pandemic, in particular organising the successful WPS@20 seminar series to mark the anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, and developing the TJI podcast series on Spotify and Apple.
During this time she also published her second monograph Women's Rights in Armed Conflict under International Law (Cambridge 2020). We are grateful for Catherine’s dedication and inspiration as TJI Director and wish her every success in her new post.