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Professor Patricia Lundy's research, which began in 2005 and continues today, has:
1) Directly led to the Minister of Justice commissioning HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) to investigate the Police Service of Northern Ireland's Historical Enquiries Team (PSNI/HET).
2) Directly led to the Northern Ireland Policing Board (NIPB) holding the PSNI to account; and a reassessment of the Board's own procedures.
3) Directly led to the resignation of HET's Director and Deputy Director, suspension of all military case-reviews, complete overhaul of HET, and policy changes in how PSNI/HET investigates historic crimes.
4) Directly led to Committee of Ministers holding the UK government to account with regards to fulfilment of its obligations deriving from European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) judgements and HET Article-2 compliance.
5) Directly led to reopening inquests, legal proceedings and informing stakeholders.
6) Directly created critical public debate about the future of the HET and policy more generally around addressing the legacy of NI conflict.
This case study demonstrates that the Transitional Justice Institute (TJI) peace process research has substantially impacted on key stakeholders in multiple conflicted and post-conflict states. Impacts include developing sustained relationships with public officials to inform policymaking, making recommendations for legal changes, capacity building with local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) on peace process issues and addressing conflict-related abuses, informing public debate, and raising awareness of international and comparative legal standards among local judiciaries subsequently applied in their work. Impacts have benefited a range of users and contributed to growing sensitivity to victims' needs in conflict resolution.
A key challenge for Western policy makers and legal practitioners in formulating justice and security responses to mass atrocity in the African Great Lakes region is to understand the political, social and cultural causes of conflict, and the manner in which past conflicts can be resolved and potential future conflicts prevented. Phil Clark's research sheds much-needed light on these issues, and assesses the nature and impact of both local and international transitional justice responses. This research has prompted his active engagement with international judicial processes and debates on aid policy, encouraging international actors to be more aware of local dynamics around conflict and justice, with the wider aim of maintaining the vulnerable stability of post-conflict nations in Africa.
Since the Bradford Riots in 2001, research at Bradford has helped to defuse underlying tensions between deprived, multiethnic communities and between them and the local state thus strengthening community resilience in the city. Building on global research, particularly in Latin America, we have introduced participatory and peace-building methodologies into the locality, but with implications beyond it. The Programme for a Peaceful City enhances our impact through academic-practitioner reflection spaces. Our research with rather than on communities fosters their voice in policy, contributing to a non-confrontational response to the EDL in 2010, 2012 and 2013 and bringing community activists from Bradford's diverse communities together to co-create the ESRC-funded Community University (Comm-Uni-ty) in May 2013.
Hull City Council is deploying Restorative Practices (RPs) to transform the lives and experiences of children and young people. This has resulted in and continues to achieve significant reductions in youth offending, improvements in educational attainment, and higher levels of well-being and happiness. Research conducted by Gerry Johnstone and his research team has enabled service providers to use RPs more effectively to achieve their goals, resulting in enhanced personal well-being, more appropriate behaviour, and a strengthening of personal responsibility amongst young people in Hull.
Based on its internationally recognised reframing of transitional justice (TJ) theory and practice, TJI demonstrates singular influence on the tone, language, framing and outcomes of key debates, policies and advocacy in Northern Ireland (NI) since 2003. TJI research has informed political debate and influenced official recommendations on institutions to address the legacy of the conflict; shaped the policy positions and enhanced the capacity of local non- governmental organisations (NGOs); shared in the production of cultural knowledge in a unique law-led artistic collaboration; raised public awareness of the intergenerational aspects of the conflict's legacy; and empowered marginalised individuals. TJI's critiques of local TJ approaches and our development of the TJ Toolkit have demonstrable global applicability. The impact has been primarily regional, with national and international dimensions.
This case study focuses on Aisha Gill's ground-breaking research on violence against women (VAW) in the UK, Iraqi Kurdistan and India as part of the Crucible Centre for Human Rights Research. Gill's research has had a direct impact on local, national and international policy-making and professional practice, in particular, in relation to `honour' based violence (HBV) and forced marriage (FM). This has underpinned her work as an academic commentator, with a strong media profile, her reports and policy briefings on VAW for UK and international public and third sector agencies, as well as an expert witness for the Crown Prosecution Service on HBV and FM cases.
Improvements in the organisation and delivery of community safety by police and local authority-led partnerships have resulted from inter-related research studies conducted by a team at the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies. Research findings have significantly influenced national policy and professional policing and community safety practices. The research led to improvements in how important new reforms to policing powers and personnel have been implemented and in community safety delivered through partnerships. It also increased understanding of the benefits and limitations of policing partnerships, powers designed to tackle anti-social behaviour and the role of police community support officers in fostering safer communities.
New democracies face the critical challenge of dealing with past abuses of human rights. Professor Leigh Payne`s empirical research on transitional justice concludes that while no single mechanism successfully achieves the strengthening of democracy, human rights, and peace, combinations of prosecutions and amnesties (with or without `truth commissions') increase the likelihood of improved democracy and human rights measures. These findings have not only shaped the debate over transitional justice; they have played a key role in constructing and endorsing the policy decisions made by a range of political actors: victims` groups, NGOs, INGOs, policymakers, politicians, judges, and prosecutors. They have shaped policy debate, laws, practices, demands, and methodological approaches to transitional justice in Brazil and Colombia; and had a direct and specific impact on policies regarding the violent past in Uruguay.
The research has had impact through promoting bottom-up, community-based approaches to truth recovery as part of post-conflict transition and human rights advocacy. This has been most evident, in reach and significance, at local and regional levels within Northern Ireland as a region with unique circumstances (emerging post-1998 from armed conflict) and by influencing the attitudes and activities of community groups, human rights/victims' Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) and lawyers involved in shaping truth recovery public policy. The work has had impact on governmental and statutory bodies and initiatives dealing with post-conflict victims' concerns and wider national and international civil society debates on truth recovery, human rights and the effects of counter-terror policing policies and practices in marginalised ethnic minority communities.