Professor Anne-Marie McAlinden
Anne-Marie McAlinden is Professor of Law and Criminal Justice in the School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast. She is the author/editor of five books, including three sole-authored monographs by leading publishers (Hart, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press) and over 60 articles/book chapters. Two of her monographs have been awarded major book prizes – The Shaming of Sexual Offenders (Hart, 2007) won the British Society of Criminology Book Prize 2008; and Children as ‘Risk’ (CUP, 2018) won the Kevin-Hart Book Prize 2019 for ‘outstanding legal scholarship.’ Her research has been supported by awards from the ESRC, AHRC, the British Academy and NOTA.
She has provided advice to governments locally, nationally and internationally. She gave oral and written expert evidence to the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2017) and has provided advice to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (2021). In March 2022, her research on apology formed the structural basis for the first state apology delivered in Northern Ireland to victims/survivors of historical institutional abuse.
She has been interviewed for and cited in a range of international media including The New York Times, The Economist and The Sydney Morning Herald. In 2023, she was conferred as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences which recognises excellence in the field and wider contribution to the social sciences.
Dr Marie Keenan
Marie Keenan is an Associate Professor at the School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice, University College Dublin. She is the author of five books including two sole authored monographs, one joint authored monograph and two edited collections by leading publishers (Oxford University Press, Routledge, Peter Lang) and over 45 articles/book chapters, policy reports and submissions and practice guides. One of her monographs, Sexual Violence and Restorative Justice: Addressing the Justice Gap (OUP, 2022) has been nominated for the major book prize for the European Society of Criminology 2023 for outstanding scholarship, and her first monograph Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church: Gender, Power and Organizational Culture (OUP, 2012) was positively reviewed in at least 19 international transdisciplinary academic and public policy outputs and translated into Hungarian. Her research has been supported by awards from the European Commission, Directorate -General Justice, Daphne III, The Irish Research Council, The Community Foundation of Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, The Tony Ryan Trust and UCD seed funding.
She has held a number of ministerial and high level appointments on statutory boards and professional bodies in Ireland and internationally providing advice on sexual violence and abuse, sex offender treatment, restorative justice and sexual abuse in institutional settings, including the Catholic Church. She gave oral and written expert evidence to the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2017) and undertook academic work for the commission and provided advice to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (2021) as well as undertaking academic work for the Inquiry. She was appointed expert advisor on the Advisory Board for Ending Sexual Violence and Harassment in Higher Education in Ireland. She is chair of gender based violence working group of the European Forum on Restorative Justice and a member of the institutional abuse working group. She is an expert member of the academic research board for the UK Restorative Justice Council.
She is an accredited psychotherapist, restorative justice practitioner and a registered social worker. She was clinical and restorative justice consultant to an award-winning film, The Meeting, Best Foreign Feature, The Artemis Women in Action Film Festival, Los Angeles, 2021, based on a true-life restorative justice meeting between a victim of sexual crime and the man who raped her. She was also Advisor and Community Engagement Partner to a theatre play Stronger, based on a true story of a restorative justice encounter between the victim and offender in the aftermath of a sexual offence. She is a regular contributor to print and broadcast media nationally and internationally.
Dr James Gallen
James Gallen is an associate professor in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University. His research interests include human rights, international law and legal and transitional justice. His present research agenda and recent publications concern a transitional justice approach to historical abuse in consolidated democracies and in Christian churches. His first monograph Transitional Justice and the Historical Abuses of Church and State was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023, available for free here, gold open access.
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. In 2018 he was again appointed by the Irish government to the Selection Panel which appointed a representation of victim-survivors of historical abuse to a new Collaborative Forum to enable effective victims-survivor engagement and consultation with government. He is the co-editor of the Irish Yearbook of International Law. He was co-investigtor on the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project “Reparations, Responsibility, and Victimhood in Transitional Societies” as the project expert on transitional justice in Nepal.
