Victims of past abuses are often the subject of transitional celebration, with previously marginalised and disrespected identities afforded recognition and support. Yet, the celebration of certain variants of victimhood and the censure of others readily lends itself to the creation of hierarchies of victimhood where those who consider themselves or are considered by others to be ‘good’ or ‘innocent’ victims dispute the ‘deservingness’ of other ‘bad’ or ‘impure’ victims. Based on fieldwork in Northern Ireland, this article deconstructs the creation of hierarchies of victimhood within a transitional context. It draws on three overlapping themes – hierarchies of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ victims; hierarchies and heroes for the cause; and hierarchies and ‘the silence of social opprobrium’. The overlapping connections between these three strands illustrates that the idea of a hierarchy of victimhood is in fact much more problematic than a simple division along communal lines. Rather, hierarchies of victimhood are predicated on highlighting the victimhood of one’s own heroes while silencing the uncomfortable aspects of one’s past. The result is not only a partial representation of who ‘counts’ as a victim, but the failure to recognise the victimhood of the vast majority of those affected by the conflict – members of the civilian population.

Citation: Lawther, C. (2021). ‘Heroes and Hierarchies: The Celebration and Censure of Victimhood in Transitional Justice’, The International Journal of Human Rights, advance access, available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13642987.2021.1946038

This article explores the intersection between the politics and construction of victimhood in transitional societies and the use of truth recovery as a platform for the creation of hierarchies of truth. It explores how, in a context of contested victimhood and an unresolved past, the ‘political currency’ of victimhood may lead to the domination and embellishment of certain voices and narratives and the concurrent silencing of others. As this article will then demonstrate, when applied to the debate on truth recovery, the capturing of victims’ voice and agency can manifest in a damaging ‘truth as trumps’ dynamic and recourse to ‘whataboutery’ in which one call for truth or the recovery of truth as significant to one side of the community is countered by that of a more ‘significant’ or more ‘important’ truth on the part of the other. The paper argues for the inculcation of a culture political generosity in transitional contexts as a way to begin to ameliorate these challenges.

Lawther, C. (2021). “Let me Tell you’: Transitional Justice, Victimhood and Dealing with a Contested Past’, Social and Legal Studies, 30, 6: 890-912 .

The legacy of the Northern Ireland conflict continues to weigh heavily on the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s institutional memory and contemporary policing practices. In this paper, we argue that the tension between competing interpretations of organisational memory and the need to ‘police’ the past has contributed to a ‘through the looking glass’ phenomenon as regards the policing past and efforts to ‘deal with’ the legacy of the Northern Ireland conflict. The article opens with an examination of the contested memory of policing in Northern Ireland. We then explore how, on the one hand, from a policing perspective, dealing with the past has been regarded as an opportunity to ‘celebrate’ aspects of the policing past but on the other, has reinforced a desire to ‘censure’ the less palatable aspects of police conduct during the conflict. Relatedly, we then interrogate how this desire to ‘secure the past’ has translated into the argument that existing and prospective mechanisms of truth recovery risk ‘re-writing’ the history of the conflict. Finally, the article considers how efforts at truth recovery have been acted upon and received by contemporary policing bodies. This part of the article lays bare both the practical challenges of ‘doing’ truth recovery within a policing framework and the need to ‘secure’ the memory of the policing past. The conclusion argues for the separation of policing and ‘the past’ and the removal of legacy work from policing bodies whose predecessor force was both a victim and perpetrator of that legacy of political violence.

Citation: Lawther, C. and Hearty, K. (2021). ‘Through the Looking Glass: Memory, Myth and Policing the Past’, Policing and Society, advance access, available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10439463.2021.1994569

This article explores practices of haunting and ghosting after conflict related loss. This is not to suggest a focus on the occult or the paranormal, but to use these phenomena as a prism through which to understand the intersection between unresolved pasts and the transmission of trauma post-conflict. As Michael Levan notes, trauma lingers ‘unexorcisably in the places of its perpetration, in the bodies of those affected, in the eyes of the witnesses, and in the politics of memory’. The ghost, according to Avery Gordon ‘is the principle form by which something lost or invisible or seemingly not there makes itself known or apparent to us.’ In this article I argue for three conceptualisations of haunting when past traumas remain unaddressed – the haunting of lost lives; the haunting of landscape; and the haunting presence of the unresolved past. The article focuses on Northern Ireland, a post-conflict jurisdiction described as being haunted by a ‘conflict calendar in which every day is an anniversary’ and extensive fieldwork with victims and survivors of the conflict. The article concludes by arguing that the presence of ghosts and the experience of haunting represent a ‘call to action’ in the quest to deal with a legacy of violent conflict and human rights abuses.

Citation: Lawther, C. (2021). ‘Haunting and Transitional Justice: On Lives, Landscapes and Unresolved Pasts’, International Review of Victimology, 27, 1: 3-22.

Citation: Lawther, C. (2020). ‘Haunting and Transitional Justice: On Lives, Landscapes and Unresolved Pasts in Northern Ireland’. In: Gobodo Madikizela, P., Prager, J. & Wale, K. (eds.) Post-Conflict Hauntings: Transgenerational Memory, Ethics and the Arts. Palgrave Macmillan.

Despite recent efforts to examine economic, social and cultural rights violations during and
post–conflict, the issue of land has often been on the periphery of transitional justice debates. Indeed, in Northern Ireland, the issue of segregation and land ownership has been seen as a separate issue to broader ‘legacy’ issues, often being overshadowed by debates on victims’ rights to justice, truth and reparation. Focusing on the historic role that land and housing have played in Northern Ireland’s conflict and ongoing political breakdown and social disorder, this article seeks to correct this omission. Based on qualitative research with those on the receiving end of displacement and exile during the Northern Ireland conflict – including victims and survivors, planners and community leaders, this article develops a fourfold analysis of the relationship between violence, land, identity and dealing with the past in a transitional context. The following themes are explored: displacement, identity and uprootedness; displacement, place and space; displacement, victimhood and trauma; and displacement, redress and the past in the present. The conclusions are relevant for Northern Ireland and other transitional contexts.

Citation: Lawther, C. and Moffett, L. (2021). ‘Lives, Landscapes and the Legacy of the Past’, Dealing with the Legacy of Conflict in Northern Ireland through Engagement and Dialogue, Glencree Journal, 137-148.

In this Note from the Field we reflect on the challenges of doing sensitive fieldwork in postconflict and transitional societies. Our reflections are informed by sustained fieldwork with victims and perpetrators of violent conflict in a range of transitional jurisdictions. While undertaking this work, we have been acutely aware of the challenges raised by our own position in the field and by the power dynamics at play when working with partner organizations and speaking with vulnerable communities. Focusing on the themes of preparation, partners and positionality, this Note highlights the benefits and potential pitfalls of this style of qualitative work and seeks to encourage a more reflexive approach to working with victims and survivors of gross human rights violations.

Citation: Lawther, C., Killean, R. and Dempster, L. (2019). ‘Working with Others: Reflections on Fieldwork in Postconflict Societies’, International Journal of Transitional Justice, 13, 2: 387-397.

Published online (2017) in Ethnopolitics.

Published in 2016 in Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly (67:1), 1-36.

Article published by Kieran McEvoy (et al.) in 2016 in Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly (67:1), 37-66.

Article by Kieran McEvoy and Anna Bryson, published in 2016 in Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly (67:1), 67-90.

Invited presentation by Dr Lauren Dempster at the University of Southern Denmark.

Slides available on request.

Invited presentation by Dr Cheryl Lawther at the University of Southern Denmark, 5-6 October 2017.

Slides available on request.

Paper presented by Dr Lauren Dempster at the Law and Society Association’s annual conference.

Slides available on request.

Paper presented by Dr Cheryl Lawther at the Law and Society Association’s annual conference.

Slides available on request.

Paper presented by Principal Investigator, Dr Cheryl Lawther, at University of Warwick.

Slides available on request.