Speaker: Karen Allen,Visiting Fellow in the Department of War Studies

Chair: Dr Maria Varaki

Organiser: War Crimes Research Group (Research Theme on Society, Culture & Law)

Karen Allen holds an MA in International Relations and Contemporary War. She was formerly a foreign correspondent with the BBC where she worked for more than 25 years covering mainly Africa and Afghanistan. She was heavily involved in reporting for the BBC, Kenya's post election violence in 2007/08 and the subsequent cases that were investigated and went to trial at the ICC. Her MA dissertation was informed by this. It sought to investigate the strategies of opposition to the ICC adopted by Kenyan elites, and asked whether Kenya's role in fighting global terrorism "bought" it some political capital when there appeared to be few consequences for its non-cooperation with the court. Karen now works as a consultant at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa with responsibility for tracking emerging threats to human security posed by new technology, big data, cybercrime and cyberterrorism.