Project Team

Professor Luke Moffett is chair of human rights and international humanitarian law in the School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast. His research focuses on reparations and victims’ rights in transitional contexts and before the International Criminal Court.

He has worked with a number of victims and victim groups in Northern Ireland, Cambodia and the Great Lakes region. He is currently Director of the Human Rights Centre at Queen’s University. His books Reparations and War is published by Oxford University Press (2023) and Justice for Victims before the International Criminal Court’ is published by Routledge (2014). Luke and Dr Cheryl Lawther have recently published their edited collection with Elgar, Research Handbook on Transitional Justice.

See his institutional website for more details.

Kieran McEvoy is Professor of Law and Transitional Justice at the School of Law and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice, Queen’s University Belfast.

He has conducted research in over a dozen conflicted or transitional countries contexts on topics including politically motivated prisoners, ex-combatants, victims, amnesties, truth recovery, human rights, restorative justice and the role of lawyers in conflict transition.

He has written or edited six books, a four volume Handbook of Transitional Justice, five special issues and over sixty journal articles and scholarly book chapters. His research has garnered a number of awards including the British Society of Criminology book of the year award and the Socio-legal Studies Association article of the year, three times.

See his institutional website for more details.

Clara Sandoval is a qualified lawyer and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law at Essex University, Acting Director of the Human Rights Centre, Co-Director of the Essex Transitional Justice Network and former Director of the LLM in International Human Rights Law.

Most of her recent scholarship has been focused on reparations for gross human rights violations by the State and by TNCs. She was a visiting professional at the International Criminal Court in 2005, providing the Court with analysis on the award of reparations for gross human rights violations by regional human rights courts, and has equally worked as a consultant for the ICC in the area of reparations.

Besides her academic commitments, Clara also engages in human rights litigation, training and capacity building with organisations such as REDRESS and the IBA and has been a consultant for the UN OHCHR for which she wrote the Special Issue on Transitional Justice and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the UN Guidance Note of the Secretary-General on Reparations for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence.

See her institutional website for more details.

Dr Cheryl Lawther is a Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work.  She was previously a post-doctoral research fellow in the School of International Relations, University of St Andrews.

From September 2016 Cheryl is seconded to The Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen’s University Belfast as a Senior Research Fellow.  Her research interests are in the fields of transitional justice, truth recovery, victims, ex-combatants and conflict transformation.

Her article “Securing’ the Past: Policing and the Contest over Truth in Northern Ireland’, British Journal of Criminology, 2010, 50, 3: 455-473 was awarded the Brian Williams Article Prize by the British Society of Criminology in July 2011. Her monograph Truth, Denial and Transition: Northern Ireland and the Contested Past was published by the Routledge Transitional Justice Series in 2014. Cheryl’s most recent book Research Handbook on Transitional Justice (co-edited with L. Moffett and D. Jacobs) was published by the Edward Elgar Research Handbooks in International Law series in 2017.

See her institutional website for more details.

James Gallen is a lecturer in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University. His PhD thesis examined the relationship between transitional justice, peace-building and economic development in international law.

His research interests include human rights, international law and legal and transitional justice. His present research agenda and recent publications concern transitional justice and jus post bellum, and a transitional justice approach to historical abuse in consolidated democracies, especially child sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

In 2017, he was appointed as an Expert Advisor on Transitional Justice by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs to advise on a transitional justice approach to the issue of Mother and Baby Homes.

See his institutional website for more details.

Peter Dixon is a Senior Co-Investigator at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. He is sociologist (PhD, University of California, Berkeley) specialising in mixed-methods research on transitional justice, peace building, and international law.

His research has thus far focused on efforts for victims of armed conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and Colombia.

Peter has previously worked at the International Criminal Court’s Trust Fund for Victims.

See his website for more details.

Padraig Quinn research is on the role of memorials and symbolic reparations in Northern Ireland.

Dr Sunneva Gilmore is an registrar doctor in Obstetrics and Gynaecology and is currently conducting research on reparations for conflict-related sexual violence in Colombia, Peru and Uganda.

See more of her work here.