TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE INSTITUTE - Research - University of Ulster

5.3 PhD Fellows and Affiliates at TJIThomas BundschuhThomas is currently engaged in doctoral work as a PhD Research Fellow at the Transitional Justice Institute of theUniversity of Ulster in Northern Ireland. He holds an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the Universityof Essex. An accomplished lawyer educated in Germany, England and Switzerland, Thomas has gained a wealth ofexperience through his work and research in Brazil, Uganda, Rwanda, Canada and South Africa. He is the co-authorof “Working Together for Sustainable Peace: Conflict Resolvers and Human Rights Advocates in Sierra Leone” in theforthcoming volume Human Rights and Conflict Resolution In Context: Case Studies from Colombia, Sierra Leoneand Northern Ireland. In his PhD research he examines the architecture of justice in transitional societies withparticular attention to economic, social and cultural rights. He locates his current inquiry within a broader focus ontransformational justice regarding deeply divided societies marked by entrenched local and/or global inequalities.Khanyisela MoyoKhanyisela is a Zimbabwean trained lawyer who has taught and practised law inZimbabwe and has served on several boards including that of the Zimbabwean Lawyersfor Human rights in Zimbabwe and Women into Politics, Northern Ireland. She holds amasters degree in International Human Rights Law from Oslo, Norway and an LLM inPublic International Law from Nottingham University, United Kingdom. Currently, she isa third year PhD Research Fellow with the Transitional Justice Institute at the Universityof Ulster, Northern Ireland. Her thesis, which is likely to be submitted in 2008, usesZimbabwe as a case study to analyse the multitudinous complexities of transitionaljustice in postcolonial societies. In addition to transitional justice her research interests are in postcolonial legaltheory, feminist legal theory, minority rights, law of international organisations, issues of collective security andeconomic, social and cultural rights.Sorcha McKennaSorcha joined the TJI as a PhD research fellow in 2004. She hold a degree in Legal Scienceand Philosophy from NUI Galway, where she wrote a dissertation on the sentencing ofsexual offences in Ireland, and a Masters in Human Rights from Queens University Belfast,where her research focused on the commercial exploitation of Children. She is currentlyin the second year of her PhD, which expands on her earlier interest in children’s rightsand sexual violence by extending into the field of international law and the specific contextof armed conflict. The thesis, entitled “Innocence Lost - The effectiveness of internationallaw in the protection of children from sexual violence during armed conflict”, will critiqueexisting humanitarian and human rights provisions for failing to provide adequate protection to children. The casestudies of Sierra Leone and Bosnia will be used to illustrate how child sexual violence can manifest during armedconflict, and the various responses to such abuses post conflict. In particular the thesis will focus on the mechanismsof accountability used in each of the case studies and the role of children within them. The aim of the research is tocontribute to the dearth of socio-legal child specific information on the impact of conflict on children, child as victimsof sexual violence and access to justice for child victims post conflict.28