TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE INSTITUTE - Research - University of Ulster

ANNE SMITHAnne Smith graduated first in her year with a BA Hons in Law and Government from theUniversity of Ulster in 1998. In 1999 at the same university, she was awarded the degree ofLLM in European Law. Having lectured part-time at the University of Ulster from Februaryto June 2000, she began her PhD in the field of human rights and equality law before movingto Queen’s University Belfast in April 2001. There she occupied posts as Human RightsTraining Officer and as a Research Associate. As the Human Rights Training Officer, Anneprovided and delivered training sessions to the public sector on the Human Rights Act andcontinues to provide consultancy work in this area. As a Research Associate, she was involvedin a major research project entitled ‘Evaluating the Effectiveness of National Human RightsInstitutions: The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, With Comparisons from SouthAfrica’, January 2005. In 2004 she moved to the Transitional Justice Institute, University of Ulster, where she wasappointed lecturer. She teaches Public International law at undergraduate level and International Human Rights Lawat postgraduate level. She recently successfully defended her PhD thesis which looked at the protection of equalityin Bills of Rights.Anne’s main research interests are in human rights and equality law, especially constitutional and institutionalmechanisms designed to promote and protect human rights and equality. Her PhD thesis examines how Bills ofRights can be used to guarantee meaningful equality and draws upon the experience of Canada and South Africa toidentify a number of lessons that other countries who are who are adopting a Bill of Rights can learn about Bills ofRights as a vehicle for protecting equality. As part of her fieldwork for her PhD, as a recipient of the MOLSON and UKPostgraduate Students Canadian Studies Travel Awards, she spent some time in Canada in August 2004 interviewinga number of people and organizations on the role the Canadian Charter has played in protecting equality. She isalso interested in the role played by National Human Rights Institutions in the promotion and protection of humanrights. This interest arose from her involvement whilst she was a Research Associate at Queen’s University Belfast.Alongside Professor Stephen Livingstone and Dr Rachel Murray, she contributed to a study resulting in a final reportwhich examined the effectiveness of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. Anne is a member of theCommittee on the Administration of Justice, the British Association for Canadian Studies and Associate Member ofthe Equality and Social Inclusion in Ireland project.CATHERINE TURNERCatherine Turner joined the Transitional Justice Institute as a Research Assistant inNovember 2004. She graduated with an LLB from Trinity College Dublin in 2002, and in2003 the Arts and Humanities Research Board awarded her a studentship to study for anLLM in public international law at the London School of Economics. Before joining the TJIshe worked in the Registry Legal Advisory section of the International Criminal Tribunal forthe former Yugoslavia and also for Mediation Northern Ireland, for whom she continuesto volunteer. Since starting at the TJI Catherine has worked on a diverse range of subjects,including the role of law in times of emergency, gender and accountability. She has alsotaught on the Public Law, Criminal Law, and Human Rights courses at the University ofUlster, School of Law. She is a part time doctoral student within the School of Law and amember of the European Society of International Law.Catherine’s main research interests lie in the field of public law and political theory, in relation to both domestic andinternational law. She has worked on the conceptual issues raised in the implementation of international humanrights laws, such as the relationship between domestic and international law, and the gaps in accountability thatoccur when internationally devised laws are applied in diverse national contexts. Her doctoral research focuseson resistance to human rights in peace processes, exploring the reasons that groups resist, or indeed are portrayedas resisting, human rights, and locating them within broader legal and philosophical trends. To this end the researchlooks at the ways in which the language of rights is introduced into political discourse and challenges the claim oflegal rights to objective normativity.24