Visiting academics

Kirsty Brimelow KC is the head of Doughty Street Chambers’ International Human Rights Team, and the first Chairwoman of the UK Bar Human Rights Committee (BHRC). Kirsty is bringing to Goldsmiths leading expertise in legal practice, fact finding, mediation and diplomacy, case management, interviewing vulnerable witnesses, and an in depth experience in training lawyers, Judges, magistrates, the police and NGO workers.

She is instructed in the most complex and prominent cases nationally and internationally, in criminal law, public law and international human rights, and has led on international investigations relating to the Yazidis and the prosecution of ISIS, mass trials and sentencing in Egypt, children rights in Nigeria, mediation in Colombia, and the rule of law in Mexico and Turkey among other projects. The Times have described her as ‘absolutely astonishing’, ‘very charming’ and a ‘superstar’.

Kirsty's profile on doughtystreet.co.uk

Former Attorney General for England and Wales, Dominic Grieve KC has worked at the intersection between the law and politics, receiving acclaim for his contributions to international human rights. He was elected as MP in 1997, entering Parliament from a career as a barrister. He held high office for over twenty years, including as shadow Attorney General, shadow Home Secretary and shadow Justice Secretary. He was a member of the Standards and Privileges Committee, and Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee.

His work in Parliament on civil liberties and the Rule of Law was recognised by two awards – Parliamentarian of the Year in 2005 and in 2014 by a Lifetime Achievement award from Liberty. He has specialised on issues relating to Law and Order, civil liberties and international affairs as well as having an interest in environmental issues.

Liora’s scholarship addresses prisoners’ rights, criminal justice and security and human rights, and she is a leading legal educationalist, who has pioneered new courses in the Law Faculty at Oxford and who was the first admissions co-ordinator and race equality co-ordinator there.

Liora is well known for her dynamic public interest work, including the completion of public reports for the UK Ministry of Justice and the EU Parliament. Liora’s Visiting Professorship adds great strength to Goldsmiths’ criminal justice and human rights research activity, and our Law & Policy Clinic, where Liora is leading on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights work.

Liora's profile at the University of Oxford

Leslie's high-profile work includes the inquests that followed the Birmingham Pub Bombing, the Hillsborough disaster and Mark Duggan, and he is currently representing 23 clients including survivors, bereaved families and loved ones in the Grenfell Tower inquiry.

Leslie has appeared in leading high-profile death in custody cases representing the families of the deceased (Azelle, Rodney, Mark Duggan, Christopher Alder and Sean Rigg). He was awarded Legal Aid Barrister of the Year in 2012, and again in 2016, for his work on the Hillsborough disaster. His appointment as Visiting Professor at Goldsmiths coincides with his appointment, as the first Black Professor of Law, at Gresham College. His inaugural lecture series at Gresham is examining Death, the State and Human Rights.

Leslie's profile on gardencourtchambers.co.uk

Sir Nice has practiced as a barrister since 1971 and is renowned for leading the prosecution of Slobodan Milošević, former President of Serbia. Much of his work since has been connected to cases before the permanent International Criminal Court – Sudan, Kenya, Libya – or pro bono for victims groups in Iran, Burma, North Korea.

Sir Nice is a Master of the Bench at the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, and was the Gresham Professor of Law between 2012 and 2017. Since 1984, he has sat at the Old Bailey and other jurisdictions, tribunals and inquiries as a part-time judge. Between 2009 and 2012 he was Vice-Chair of the Bar Standards Board, the body that regulates barristers. 

Geoffrey Nice Foundation

She is bringing to Goldsmiths outstanding leadership in human rights legal practice and reform, and unique experience in providing direction to a large team of lawyers, policy specialists, researchers, communications experts and fundraisers to run high-profile and influential litigation to advance human rights.

Her practice has a particular focus on access to justice, freedom of expression, community care, children and women’s rights, the rights of immigration detainees, LGBTI+ rights, and the rights of victims of rape, domestic violence and trafficking. She is the author of a number of human rights-related publications, and has worked on human rights cases at all levels, including before the Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights, and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. 

Martha's profile on libertyhumanrights.org.uk

She is bringing to Goldsmiths her unique insight and leading expertise in international human rights law and the rule of law internationally. 

Over the last decade, Schona has been at the forefront of international human rights and rule of law work in countries around the world, including Central Asia, Egypt, Hong Kong, Turkey and across South Asia. Her dynamic and practical contributions to the field engage law and policy.

She has deep expertise in equality and discrimination law, with an international focus on minority rights. Her Chambers profile appears here.

From 1993-1997, Jessica worked in the Environment Directorate of the European Commission in Brussels, the European Commission of Human Rights in Strasbourg and then as legal adviser to the Human Rights Ombudsman in Bosnia. 

Jessica has been counsel in numerous landmark cases, including Smith and Grady v UK (ending the ban on homosexuals in the Armed Forces), R (Wright) v Home Secretary (the first case in which the Home Secretary was ordered to initiate a public inquiry into a death in custody) as well as R (Miller) v Prime Minister, which made legal history by successfully challenging the Prime Minister’s decision to use the Royal Prerogative to notify the EU of the UK’s intended withdrawal under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union.  

Jessica is bringing to Goldsmiths leading expertise in areas of activity central to the Department of Law, such as the socio-legal repercussions of Brexit, sustainability and social justice. Her work on Brexit continues to attract significant interest from legal and policy experts in the area. She is also currently acting in the judicial review challenge to the decision of UK Export Finance Department and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to provide UK financing of $1.15bn in respect of Total’s liquid natural gas development in Cap Delgado in Mozambique, and is leading a project to advocate for EU legislation with extra-territorial effects to ensure a living wage for workers in the garment sector. 

Clive is the founder of leading NGO Reprieve, who fight for people on death row, people held without charge or trial, people tortured and people targeted by illegal and lethal drone attacks.

Clive is adding to Goldsmiths' LLB and LLM programmes world-leading expertise in criminal justice work, along with a unique capacity to work with and inspire the future generation of lawyers with strong human rights instincts.

Goldsmiths appoints ‘legendary’ Clive Stafford Smith as a Visiting Professor in Law.

I am a Senior Research Fellow in Anthropology and the co-director of the Global Challenges Research Fund Global Gender and Cultures of Equality (GlobalGRACE) Project: https://www.globalgrace.net/.

Aside from directing GlobalGRACE, I work principally with our project partners in Bangladesh on 'Women working in men's worlds: visualising female construction workers and the quest for more equitable futures in Sylhet'; and with our project partners in Mexico on 'Por el buen vivir y el buen migrar: creating cultures of equality through the Migrant Museum with indigenous communities of Chiapas'.

As with all our GlobalGRACE research, both these projects bring theoretical approaches from gender studies and anthropology together with arts based practices and multi-sensory research to investigate the production of cultures of equality internationally.

My anthropological research explores the practices and politics of historical knowledge and how it is drawn through both official and informal sources.

I am interested in how the past constituted through dynamic and everyday historicity and senses of temporality, that includes ritual, experience, material culture, landscape, and folklore as well as archived sources and expert interpretations.

My longitudinal fieldwork is rooted in my doctoral research with British Witches and Wiccans, partly located at the Museum of Witchcraft in Cornwall.

I am preparing a monograph for publication in 2019 in the Routledge Anthropology of History series.

Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan’s audio-visual and written work engages with the ways in which digital media consumption, production, and circulation shape understandings of migration, gender, race, and urban space. 

Minou Norouzi is an Austrian-Iranian filmmaker, writer, and curator based in London (UK) and Athens (GR). She obtained her PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London supported by the Arts and Humanity Research Council (2018). Her research examines the objectification of the real in the context of interdisciplinary documentary practices. She draws from documentary studies, feminist film scholarship, and postcolonial ethnographic studies to reframe documentary ethics from a feminist materialist standpoint.

Whilst giving the impression of layered fiction her video works are routed in documentary practice. Thematic interests have included identity politics and the psychological landscapes of incubated desire, migration politics expressed through plant life or explored through social practice in collaboration with refugee youths. Her full-length biopic on the controversial 60s cultural icon Carlos Castaneda explores myth-making and the ‘fictioning’ of the anthropological real.

Her films have been shown at South London Gallery, Calvert 22 (London), Centre for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow), Telic Arts Exchange (Los Angeles), and at film festivals including the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Kasseler Dok Fest, Videoex, Hot Docs.

Minou initiated the Arts Council England funded Sheffield Fringe project in 2011 and has been involved in organizing film-related events at Whitechapel Gallery and Close-Up Film Centre (London); S1 Artspace and Bloc Projects (Sheffield); UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art and apexart (New York); MARSistanbul and SALT Beyoğlu (Istanbul).

She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Arts at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Finland.

Chinelo L. Njaka, PhD (she/her/hers) is a social researcher and multimedia maker-artist (primarily textiles, fibre, and photography). 

She is also the Founder and Director of Peckham Rights!, a not-for-profit organisation that creatively addresses systemic racism(s) and champions everyday human rights for the people of Peckham, London and beyond. 

1. Njaka earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of Manchester. Her areas of expertise are race, racism(s), and racialisation; with particular focus on how understandings of race on a societal level are shaped and influenced by the ideas, communications, and actions of state and institutional bodies, and through organisations at the community (e.g., civil society and voluntary and community sector) level. Her broad areas of interest also include the African Diaspora/people of African descent, Critical Mixed Race Studies, qualitative methods, creative research, health and health promotion, human rights, and craft/creative practices.
2. Njaka is also interested in current forms of antiracism activism and shifts in ‘race talk’, especially in the wake of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in the United States. Bringing the strands race and craft together, she is currently working with the Crafts Council on various research and consultation projects around race and racism within the crafts sector.

Her current research areas explore the intersection of race and craft in the European/North American contexts, as well as craft in ‘non-Western’ contexts with specific focus on African and African-diaspora ethnic communities. 

Currently, she is working with the collection at the Horniman Museum and Gardens to examine Igbo and Nigerian textile and fibre arts, as well as the museum’s Nancy Stanfield collection, which consists of objects and photography from pre-Biafra War Nigeria (1946-1967). 

She is also researching Black quilters and quilting within the African, UK/European, and North American contexts, examining the themes of storytelling and movement within these quilting practices.  

Academic Qualifications 

• D. Sociology, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
• MA Sociology: Culture, Globalisation and the City, Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, UK 
• BA Biology, Sociology, and Spanish, Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA 

In addition to her academic work, she has done regular consultancies for aid and development organisations such as ACORD, the Eritrean Consortium, UNICEF and UNFPA, in Eastern and Southern Africa.

Areas of supervision

Current PhD students

Sarah O'Neill, Defying the law, negotiating change. The Futanke's opposition to the national ban on FGM in Senegal

Completed PhD students

Nandera Mhando, Meaning, Gender and Kinship Making Aming the Kuria of Tanzania: Male and Female Agency