About
The European Criminology Group on Atrocity Crimes and Transitional Justice (ECACTJ) provides a network for European criminologists who are engaged in research on atrocity crimes and transitional justice, whether in or on Europe, or globally. The aim of this Working Group is to enhance the contribution of criminology and criminologists in this field, to stimulate research in and on Europe and to promote exchange between European and international researchers. The group collaborates with other networks and research groups in the field. The Supranational Criminology Network is represented in the group by its founder, Professor Alette Smeulers, Tilburg University, Netherlands. With its focus on researchers in Europe, it is nonetheless global in its perspectives. The group was founded in 2013, and has thrived since then with an increasing membership.
Why this group?
Europe as a region has witnessed unspeakable mass atrocity crimes and genocide, and Europeans have been involved as perpetrators in mass violence across the globe. However, Europe was also the site of the Nuremberg Trial, where for the first time perpetrators were brought to justice. Europe has played a decisive role in the proliferation of legal instruments, and procedures ever since then, including International Criminal Tribunals and the International Criminal Court. The world owes the term 'genocide' to Raphael Lemkin, a Polish migrant in the US.
Chair
Contact
- Home: http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/people/andyaitchison
- Mail: Andy.Aydin-Aitchison@ed.ac.uk
- Phone: +44316514563
Research focus
- genocide,
- war crimes,
- Bosnia,
- Yugoslavia,
- state-building,
- democratisation,
- police
About
I joined the School of Law in 2012 and I lecture in criminology and direct the MSc in Global Crime, Justice and Security. My teaching and research interests are in the field of global problems of crime and responses to these. Previously, I lectured in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh and worked as a researcher for the Home Office and Cardiff University.
I divide my research into two main areas. The first focuses on reform in post-socialist, post-authoritarian and post-conflict states with a holistic perspective on the criminal justice sector. This includes conceptual and empirical work on democratisation. I have a particular interest in international aspects of governance. A series of publications explore these matters in the context of Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the book, Making the Transition (2011).
A second strand of my work focuses on international crimes, including genocide. I am presently working on empirical analysis of police participation in war crimes and ethnic cleansing in one region of Bosnia in relation to legacies of the Yugoslav state and the initial democratisation processes in the early 1990s.
Contact
- Mail: b.hola@vu.nl
- Phone: +31205983350
Research focus
- International sentencing
- Transitional justice
- Empirical legal studies
About
Barbora Hola works as Senior Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR) and as Associate Professor at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at VU University of Amsterdam. She has an interdisciplinary focus and studies transitional justice after atrocities, in particular (international) criminal trials, sentencing of international crimes, enforcement of international sentences, rehabilitation of war criminals and life after trial at international criminal tribunals. Barbora has published extensively on these subjects and presented at international conferences and universities in Europe, Africa and the America’s. In 2013, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded Barbora the prestigious VENI grant for a research on sentencing of international crimes by national courts in Bosnia and Rwanda. In 2015 Barbora, together with Lily Rueda, received a Research Talent Grant for a project focusing on the role of sanctions in the ICC complementarity assessment. In 2016, the NWO WOTRO funded a project on cycle of violence in post-conflict settings, in which she cooperates with colleagues from the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement and the Prison Fellowship Rwanda. In 2017, Barbora was one of the four candidates who received the highly competitive ‘WISE’ (Women in Science Excel) fellowship from the NWO to develop her research line on empirical studies of international criminal and transitional justice after atrocities. Besides her research and teaching in the Master’s programme International Crimes and Criminology, Barbora is a co-director of the Center for International Criminal Justice, a knowledge centre dedicated to interdisciplinary studies of mass atrocity crimes and international criminal justice (www.cicj.org).
Contact
- Home: https://en.uit.no/ansatte/nandor.knust
- Mail: nandor.knust@uit.no
- Phone: +4777645580
Research focus
- International Criminal Justice
- Comparative Criminal Law
- Transitional Justice
- International Crime Control
Publications
: Criminal Law and Gacaca (Strafrecht und Gacaca). 2013.: Transitional Justice & Positive Complementarity (Transitional Justice und Positive Komplementarität). 2013.
About
Nandor Knust studied law at the universities of Frankfurt and Paris. He worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania and he carried out several field research visits to the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
As a member of the International Max Planck Research School for Comparative Criminal Law (IMPRS-CC) he completed his dissertation about a pluralistic model of Transitional Justice in 2011 that was awarded with the Otto-Hahn-Medal for outstanding scientific achievements.
He is heading the International Criminal Law Section of the MPICC and serves as Scientific Coordinator of the IMPRS-CC.
Nandor Knust is/was lecturer at a plurality of universities such as the University of Mannheim; Tumaini University, Tanzania; Arcadia University (with the East African Community) in Arusha, Tanzania and the School of Governance, Law and Society at the Tallinn University, Estonia and the Campus Helsinki, Finland.
Contact
- Home: http://www.jus.uio.no/ior/english/people/aca/kjerlo/index.html
- Mail: Kjersti.lohne@jus.uio.no
- Phone: +4797175846
Research focus
Lohne's primary thematic interest is the role of judicalisation and criminal punishment in the making of global social order, which she is currently approaching through a number of different empirical research fields and projects:
- International criminal justice (book project and articles based on her doctoral research and more)
- The Guatanamo military commissions (ongoing project at PluriCourts)
- Rule of (criminal) law development and "penal aid" to so-called failed or transitional states (forthcoming postdoctoral research project at IKRS).
- Rights-based approaches to humanitarian action (with Kristin Bergtora Sandvik)
Lohne has also published in international peer-review journals on other research topics, such as privacy and data protection, gender, crime and sexual violence, and drones.
About
Kjersti Lohne holds a doctorate in Criminology from the University of Oslo (2015). Her doctoral thesis, Advocates of Humanity: Human Rights NGOs in International Criminal Justice, analyses the cultural meaning of global justice-making through international criminal law, and focuses specifically on the role that human rights NGOs play in the materialities and imaginaries of international criminal justice. It is based on a multi-sited ethnography including interviews with key players in The Hague (and other places in the Netherlands) and in Uganda as well as Belgium, Norway, Rwanda and the UK.
Contact
Research focus
- Theoretical integration of psychology and criminology (mass violence)
- .Crime, health and human development
- Understanding and reducing the effects of environmental and family stress on children and youth
About
Jon Shute is a Criminologist working at the Centre for Criminology
& Criminal Justice (CCCJ), University of Manchester Law School. Jon
has enduring research interests in crime, health and human development;
in particular, understanding and reducing the effects of environmental
and family stress on children and youth. He is also interested in the
theoretical integration of psychology and criminology, and the
application that integration to the study of mass violence.
His project role is to develop and apply a theory of ‘moral neutralisation’ to explain the denial strategies that are (I) used by perpetrators (and bystanders) when destroying bodies; (II) challenged, entrenched or transformed by the identification of bodies; (III) overcome – or possibly even further employed – in order to commemorate of the victims of mass violence. He is also interested in exploring the destruction of bodies as punishment (that is, as a subject of penological analysis), and in comparing the ways in which former criminals and former criminal states come to terms with their past.
Contact
- Home: http://alettesmeulers.org/index.php/en/
- Mail: info@alettesmeulers.org
- Phone: +31134662254
Research focus
Perpetrator of International Crimes
Causes of International Crimes
International Criminal Prosecution
Criminology of International Crimes
About
Current positions
- 2015- Freelancer at Smeulers: training, research and consultancy
- 2014- Professor in international criminology at the University of Groningen (0,2 fte)
- 2011- Professor in international criminology at Tilburg University (0,2 fte)
Other activities
- 2014- Co-chair European Criminology Group on Atrocity Crimes and Transitional justice
- 2014- Associated researcher at NIOD
- 2013- Member of the editorial advice board of Genocide Studies International
- 2012- Research fellow at Intervict
- 2012- Initiating member of the African Low Countries Network (ALCN).
- 2012- Member of the advisory board of Young Professionals Research Intiative
- 2006- Member of the editorial board of the book series Supranational Criminal Law, Intersentia
- 2006- Editor-in-chief of the newsletter Criminology and International crimes as off 2014 member of the editorial board
- 2005- Initiator and manager of the Supranational Criminology network
- 2009 Open Competition - scholarship (207.000 Euro) awarded by NWO (MaGW) for the project: ‘Breaking the chain of command
- 2008 Best Practice: Capita Selecta Sierra Leone by the Educational Centre of VU University, Amsterdam
- 2005 VENI-scholarship (200.000 Euro) awarded by NWO for the project: ‘A criminological approach to individual criminal responsibility’
- 1993 Honourable mentions of my master-thesis on perpetrators of international crimes at the PIOOM-Award Ceremony.