Murphy & Simonsen work with India Institute Fellows

Dr Cian Murphy led a group of King’s India Institute’s Chevening-Gurukul Fellows on an educational tour of Northern Ireland as part of their work on The Regulation of Public Life.

In preparation for the visit Ms Natasha Simonsen & Dr Murphy led a seminar on ‘Terror and Torture’ in Somerset House East Wing – covering topics such as detention conditions in Northern Ireland during the conflict there as well as international examples including the US response to the 11 September 2001 attacks. The Fellows’ discussion considered how the state faces the threat of terrorism and the problems that can arise when torture is used as a method of counter-terrorism.

The visit to Northern Ireland began on Wednesday 21 October, in Belfast, where the Fellows took in a ‘Black Taxi Tour’ to develop a sense of the region’s social, political, and cultural history, and the marks it still leaves on society today. A panel discussion at Queen’s University Belfast School of Law involved Professor Brice Dickson, first Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, Dr Evelyn Collins CBE, Chief Executive of the Equality Commission of Northern Ireland, and Mr Noel Sharkey, Founder of Yes Equality Donegal. The discussion covered a range of topics in equality and anti-discrimination and, in particular, the question of same-sex marriage, which has been the subject of recent constitutional change in the Republic of Ireland, and is the subject of significant debate in Northern Ireland.

_{Fellows with Dr Cian Murphy, Professor Brice Dickson, Dr Evelyn Collins & Noel Sharkey at Queen’s University Belfast.}

Perhaps the highlight of the Fellows’ visit to Belfast was a tour of Stormont Buildings, the seat of the Northern Ireland Assembly. A tour gave the Fellows insight into the history and the current operation of the Assembly and the Northern Ireland Executive. The final aspect of the Fellows’ trip to Belfast was a lecture from multiple award-winning writer, Professor Kieran McEvoy, at Queen’s University Belfast. The lecture drew on Professor McEvoy’s extensive work in Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Israel, to better understand the role that lawyers can and do play in conflicts. The Fellows were also able to draw on their experience of the Indian legal system to compare legal cultures across jurisdictions.

In Derry the Fellows took in a walking tour of the City Walls and the Bogside area before their participation in a seminar at the Transitional Justice Institute at the University of Ulster.  Dr Khanyisela Moyo, Dr Anne Smith, and Professor Brandon Hamber led the discussion, which took the Fellow’s work beyond Northern Ireland into the broader global context including examples from South Africa and other post-conflict societies around the world.