Research

Professor Carla Ferstman leads a pilot project on UK military accountability for international crimes in Iraq.

This project is a collaboration between the Essex Law School, University of Essex and the Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster University, assessing efforts for accountability for abuses by the UK military in Iraq by the UK and ICC.

The project has produced a report to key stakeholders in the UK and ICC, and other outputs include the aim to encourage and foster multi-country research into alleged crimes by Western powers' military forces.

Recent pieces include Incendiary Speech Acts, Lawfare and Other Rhetorical Battles Against the Rule of Law, Why Civil Claims are a Necessary Part of the Arsenal to Address Military Excesses: Assessing the UK Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill and EJILtalk! Blog Symposium on the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans Bill).

Professor Carla Ferstman has been researching, writing and advocating for stronger protections against sexual exploitation and abuse for many years.

Dr Gus Waschefort has recently shifted focus to researching law and armed conflict in Africa on a macro level. That is to say, researching law and armed conflict in Africa as a topic in and of itself.

His article ‘Africa and International Humanitarian Law: The more things change, the more they stay the same’ International Review of the Red Cross (2016) provides a blueprint for his research agenda in the coming years.

Prior to his academic career, Gus had first-hand experience working in armed conflict settings in his time as a photojournalist. Some of his images from Democratic Republic of Congo are displayed on this site.

Professor Natasha Lindstaedt, Faculty Dean Undergraduate (Social Science), studies authoritarian regimes, failed states, violent non-state actors and human security. Professor Lindstaedt is involved in various projects on authoritarianism and democracy.

M.O.R.D.O.R. is an Erasmus+ project, co-funded by the European Union focusing on improving general education on authoritarianism and preparing recommendations for EU foreign policy stakeholders regarding democracy support.

TRECA is an academic network to study transnational efforts by national and regional governments, international institutions and courts, NGOs, international and domestic institutions, civil society, and research networks. This project includes the involvement of the Project on Autocratic Legalism (PAL) and the Global Legal Studies Center at UW-Madison. PAL studies efforts by autocrats to use the law to gain and secure power, and resistance to such efforts, with an initial focus on Brazil, India, and South Africa.

Professor Lucy Noakes is exploring the role of civilians in armed conflict in a historical context.

Her publications include Valuing the Dead: Death, Burial and the Body in Second World War Britain; Total War: An Emotional History (Oxford: Oxford University Press; and Gendering Grief in Second World War Britain.

Professor Noakes is currently working to complete a project with Professor Susan R Grayzel (Utah State University) called 'How to Survive a War' which examines the militarisation of everyday, civilian life through the history of civil defence in 20th century Britain.

Professor Andrew Bateman is leading work in rehabilitation after acquired brain injury. A current focus is the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) funded “Heads Together” project launching April 2022 that is a study concerning the education of social workers to enable them to better support people living with brain injury.

Traumatic brain injury arising from blast injuries have been described as “signature injuries” of recent conflicts where individuals are exposed to IEDs. The consequences are often “invisible”, for example, fatigue, cognitive and emotional impairments, and may be masked by the physical injuries sustained at the same time. Consequences of brain injury are amenable to rehabilitation and need to be identified and not ignored.

The Essex Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub leads an international and interdisciplinary project that seeks to reduce civilian harm in war by addressing a legal blind-spot. Currently, the law applicable to armed conflicts fails to adequately account for the cumulative impact of military action. International law regulates individual attacks in wars which could lead to disproportionate casualties but does not adequately consider the cumulative impact of multiple attacks. This gap in the law fails to account for both the direct and indirect effects of prolonged exposure to conflict, such as infrastructure collapse, societal trauma, or socio-economic decline. The research project involves interviews, surveys with civilian populations, and direct engagement with governments, militaries, and civil society organisations. The goal is to produce an action-guiding legal and policy framework which can be used by decision-makers in future conflicts to address cumulative civilian harm.

The research is being led by Professor Noam Lubell with Nihad Aboud and Franziska Fluhr working as researchers on the project. For the project, Essex collaborates with the Universities of Oxford, Georgetown, Duke, and the Israel Democracy Institute.

Read more in the project announcement.

The Digital Verification Unit works with Amnesty International and other partners to conduct investigations into human rights violations around the world, using open-source techniques. It is run by Dr Matthew Gillett.

The DVU is currently working on a number of different projects, including documenting airstrikes linked to civilian casualties in Yemen, documenting ‘drift backs’ in the Mediterranean Sea, and a cultural heritage project aimed at documenting the initial cultural history of the Syrian revolution.

This Essex Human Rights Centre Clinic Project was set up in partnership with the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP). The student researchers, supervised by Professor Sabine Michalowski, provided the JEP with a thorough analysis of the intricate and potentially contentious questions raised concerning the criminal prosecution of environmental crimes and the design of restorative sanctions and reparation to provide redress to victims. These are novel issues and the approaches to them are highly contested within and outside the JEP.

Professor Tracey Loughran teaches on the MA War, Culture, and Society in the Department of History. She has carried out research on the history of war and trauma in the First World War.

Dr Fatima El-Issawi, a Senior Lecturer within the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies, conducts research that explores the role of the media and journalists within conflict and democratization in the Arab region. In a major new project funded by the British Academy, Fatima leads an international team to investigate the complex role of the media in conflicts, reviewing journalistic practices in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco following the Arab Spring.

The project, funded by the British Academy’s Sustainable Development Programme 2018, will:

• collaborate with journalists and civil society to debate journalistic practices and implications on societal divisions and polarisations
• take findings to the next generation of journalists with workshops and seminars at newsrooms, colleges and universities
• build a network of knowledge transfer and contribute to policymaking by working with partners such as the Africa Centre at London School of Economics
• publish two academic books and a number of journal articles to share findings

Members of the Essex Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub are using their research to produce original policy briefs on the protection of civilians in conflict. These will serve the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) in advocacy work with high-level policymakers, governments (including parliamentary/congressional staff), and military practitioners.

As part of this project we have created four primers for CIVIC:

• Investigations Into Civilian Harm in Armed Conflict
• Amends and Reparations for Civilian Harm in Armed Conflict
• Environmental Harm from Military Operations and the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict
• Displacement in Armed Conflict and the Protection of Civilians

These primers can be downloaded from the CIVIC website.

The research is being led by Professor Noam Lubell with Claire Simmons working as a researcher on the project.

In an outstanding research initiative, the University of Essex Human Rights Centre (HRC) Clinic collaborated with the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Modern Conflict to examine the UK’s Special Forces operations. Led by a team of postgraduate law student researchers— Hamza Bozkurt, Vanessa Topp, Jack Millar, and Greta Ciucci—supervised by Dr Erin Pobjie and supported by Dr Kaleigh Heard, the project aimed to shed light on the controversial ‘no comment’ policy and its implications for accountability and transparency.

Professor Karen Hulme is Chair of the Specialist Group on Peace, Security and Conflict with the World Commission on Environmental Law (IUCN), and is working on a four year plan at present.

The project will develop model legislation to help operationalize the International Law Commission’s (ILC) Draft Principles on Protection of the Environment in relation to Armed Conflict.

Professor Vasilios Ioakimidis' work focuses on social services/work in the context of armed and political conflict and explores such practice in the context of unpredictable and extraordinary political, social, economic and environmental change. Vasilios focused primarily on Cyprus, Greece and Colombia and more recently, his work explores the broad issue of accountability of professionals (primarily in the 'helping professions') who work in armed conflict.

Practical guidance on the role of the rule of law in securing a better future for refugees led by Professor Geoff Gilbert, chair of the Global Academic Interdisciplinary Network (GAIN).

Professor Lucy Noakes is the Principal Investigator on a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, titled “Reflections on the Centenary: Learning and Legacies for the Future”.

Working with colleagues at the Universities of Exeter, Glasgow and Kent, and with Dr James Wallis, a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of History at Essex, Professor Noakes is investigating the impact and legacies of a range of projects which took place between 2014 and 2018 to commemorate the centenary of the First World War in Britain.

Related publication include 'War and the British: Gender and National identity 1939-1991 (originally published 1998, to be republished by Bloomsbury 2023), ‘My husband is interested in war generally’: Gender, Generation and Mass Observation at the centenary of the First World War’, Women’s History Review, 27:4 2018 (republished in British Women’s Histories of the First World War 2020).

Professor Noam Lubell is a Senior Research Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in the US, working on the legal, ethical, and policy aspects of new military technologies in general and three areas in particular: protection of humanitarian missions in cyber space; the ethical and legal challenges arising from human enhancement technologies; and military use of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems.

Professor Carla Ferstman, in her role as member of the Council of Europe Conference on INGOs’ Expert Council on NGO Law, conducted a major study on the criminalisation of civil society groups providing assistance to refugees and migrants throughout the Member States of the Council of Europe.

The study resulted in a major report published by the Expert Council and the adoption of guidelines on protecting NGO work. Also, in this same capacity, Professor Ferstman carried out an analysis of new legislation in Greece which had the effect of severely limiting civil society space of groups supporting refugees and migrants. 

The below members of the Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub work on the Protection of Civilians and Human Rights:

• Professor Noam Lubell
• Professor Carla Ferstman
• Professor Geoff Gilbert
• Dr Gus Waschefort
• Dr Katya Alkhateeb
• Dr Antonio Coco

The below Members of the Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub work on Health and Social Work in Situations of Emergency:

• Professor Vasilios Ioakimidis
• Professor Andrew Bateman
• Dr Julie Hannah
• Professor Renos Papadopoulos

The below Members of the Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub work on Displacement and Migration:

• Professor Geoff Gilbert
• Professor Renos Papadopoulos
• Professor Carla Ferstman

The below Members of the Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub work on Journalism and the Media in Conflict:

• Dr Fatima El-Issawi
• Dr Gus Waschefort

The below Members of the Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub work on Authoritarianism, Armed Groups and Terrorism:

• Professor Natasha Lindstaedt
• Dr Brian Phillips

The below Members of the Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub work on the History of War and Conflict:

• Professor Tracey Loughran 
• Professor Lucy Noakes
• Dr Matthew Grant

We are proud to collaborate with members of the Essex Transitional Justice Network who provide expertise on issues related to conflict and transitional justice.

• Professor Sabine Michalowski

• Professor Lars Waldorf

• Professor Clara Sandoval

• Dr Ebba Lekvall

• Dr Erin Pobjie

• Dr Tuba Turan

The below Members of the Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub work on the Environment and Cultural Heritage in Armed Conflict:

• Professor Karen Hulme
• Dr Matthew Gillett
• Dr Marina Lostal

The below Members of the Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub work on Human Enhancement and Emerging Technologies in Conflict:

• Dr Katya Al Khateeb
• Professor Noam Lubell
• Dr Antonio Coco

The below Members of the Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub work on Conflict Related Trauma:

• Professor Tracey Loughran
• Professor Renos Papadopoulos
• Professor Andrew Bateman

The below Members of the Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub work on Gender Dimensions of Conflict:

• Professor Carla Ferstman

The below members of the Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub work on accountability for violations in armed conflict:

• Dr Carla Ferstman
• Professor Noam Lubell
• Dr Haim Abraham

Members of the Hub working on Health and Social Work in Situations of Emergency include Professor Vasilios Ioakimidis.

Professor Geoff Gilbert provides expertise on Displacement and Refugee Law within the Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub.

The Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub has members working on Journalists and the Media in Conflict, including Dr. Fatima El-Issawi.