Presented by Dr. Phil Clark and Dr Nicola Palmer
Phil Clark is Reader in Comparative and International Politics, with reference to Africa. An Australian by nationality but born in Sudan, Dr Clark is a political scientist specialising in conflict and post-conflict issues in Africa, particularly questions of peace, truth, justice and reconciliation. His research addresses the history and politics of the African Great Lakes, focusing on causes of and responses to genocide and other forms of mass violence. His work also explores the theory and practice of transitional justice, with particular emphasis on community-based approaches to accountability and reconciliation and the law and politics of the International Criminal Court.
Previously, he was a Research Fellow in Courts and Public Policy at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, a Golding Research Fellow at Brasenose College, and co-founder and convenor of Oxford Transitional Justice Research. He has a DPhil in Politics from Balliol College, University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.
Dr Nicola Palmer is as a lecturer in criminal law at the Dickson Poon School of law, King’s College London and author of ‘Courts in Conflict: Interpreting the Layers of Justice in Post-genocide Rwanda’ (OUP 2015). She recently completed an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project, in collaboration with Dr. Briony Jones at swisspeace, on the methods used to formulate, implement and assess transitional justice processes. The papers developed from this exchange are available as a Special Issue of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society Volume 30, Issue 2, 2015.
Nicola’s interests in transnational law are reflected in her teaching and research. She currently co-teaches, with Dr Prabha Kotiswaran, an LLM course entitled ‘Transnational and International Criminal Law’. This teaching has informed her and Dr. Kotiswaran’s joint publication ‘Rethinking the ‘International Law of Crime’: Provocations from Transnational Legal Studies’ (2015) 6 (1) Transnational Legal Theory. In addition, prompted by recent writing in transitional law, her current research examines the intersections between international criminal law and other forms of regulatory governance.