Kirsten’s research investigates sexual and gender-based violence in conflict, transitional justice and international criminal law. She has worked on policy and practice in this area with NGOs, governments, and the UN for over two decades. She has provided expert submissions to the House of Lords and the European Parliament, and amicus curiae submissions to the International Criminal Court. Kirsten’s recent book, The Justice of Humans: Subject, Society, and Sexual Violence in International Criminal Justice draws on her European Research Council funded projects, The Gender of Justice, and TRANSFORM. This work built on her previous ESRC funded study of shifts in the legal regulation of armed conflict.
Kirsten is co-editor of the Journal of Gender-Based Violence (https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/jgbv/jgbv-overview.xml). She is a member of the Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict international research group, and convenes the Gender of Justice Research Group.
An interdisciplinary scholar of law and sociology, Kirsten holds doctorates in law and modern languages. Prior to joining Loughborough Law, Kirsten was Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she was the Director of the Unit for Global Justice, and is now Emeritus Professor. She was a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow in Law at the European University Institute (Italy), and has held visiting fellowships at Sciences Po (France), Lund University (Sweden), and UC Berkeley (USA). Kirsten is a qualified solicitor and barrister (Victoria, Australia), and practised as a commercial litigation lawyer.
Kirsten’s research investigates sexual and gender-based violence in conflict, transitional justice and international criminal law from a socio-legal and transnational perspective. Kirsten has worked on policy and practice in this area for over two decades.
An interdisciplinary scholar of sociology and law, Kirsten’s research expertise includes international criminal law, international humanitarian law, socio-legal studies, and social theory. She has an ongoing concern with socio-legal and feminist methodology and methods. She recently published a major socio-legal study of international justice, The Justice of Humans: Subject, Society, and Sexual Violence in International Criminal Justice. Kirsten has published widely in this area, including on gender and international criminal law, conflict-related sexual violence research methodology, and feminist approaches to transitional justice. Kirsten’s current research builds on her ongoing work on feminist social movements and feminist theories of knowledge.
Kirsten’s research draws on her European Research Council funded projects, ‘The Gender of Justice’ and ‘TRANSFORM’. These projects studied the prosecution of sexual violence in armed conflict in the former Yugoslavia. This work built on her previous ESRC-funded study of shifts in the legal regulation of armed conflict, ‘Regulating Armed Conflict’.
Kirsten is co-editor of the Journal of Gender-Based Violence (https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/jgbv/jgbv-overview.xml). She is a member of the Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict international research group, which recently published the major interdisciplinary collection, In Plain Sight: Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict. She also convenes the Gender of Justice Research Group, as well as contributing to the Sexual Violence in Conflict and Post-Conflict Settings study group of the International Law Association.
Kirsten’s teaching includes public international law, international criminal law, law and society, sociology of law, and legal and socio-legal research methodology and methods at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Kirsten welcomes doctoral students working on sexual and gender-based violence in conflict; violence, conflict and war; feminist legal theory; public international law; international criminal law; and transitional justice.
- The Justice of Humans: Subject, Society, and Sexual Violence in International Criminal Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
- ‘A Feminist Critique of Approaches to International Criminal Justice in the Age of Identity Politics’, with Gorana Mlinarevic, in Indira Rosenthal, Valerie Oosterveld, and Susana SáCouto eds., Gender and International Criminal Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.
- In Plain Sight: Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict, with Regina Mühlhäuser and Gaby Zipfel, New Delhi: Zubaan, 2019.
- ‘Understanding Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: Analysing the Everyday Experience of Conflict Through Witness Testimonies’, with Elma Demir and Maria O’Reilly, Cooperation and Conflict, 54(2): 254-277, 2019.
- ‘Producing Knowledge in the Field of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict-Research’, Social Politics, 25(4): 469-495, 2018.
- ‘Ethical Challenges: Researching War Crimes’, in Malcolm Cowburn, Loraine Gelsthorpe and Azrini Wahidin, , Research Ethics in Criminology and Criminal Justice. London: Routledge: London, 2017.
- ‘The Making of Global Legal Culture and International Criminal Law’, Leiden Journal of International Law, 26(1): 155-72, 2013.
- ‘Laws of Memory’, Social and Legal Studies, 22(2): 247-69, 2013.