Phil Scraton: Bearing Witness to the Pain of Others

Professor Phil Scraton discusses the responsibility of researchers and human rights advocates to represent the ‘view from below’ – voices of those silenced by powerful institutions in securing truth, justice and acknowledgement. Drawing on three decades of research with and within communities – investigating the Hillsborough disaster and its aftermath, the inhumanities of incarceration and the systemic denial of prisoners’ rights, and the disappearances of babies from mother and baby institutions – he addresses the political, ethical and personal challenges to bearing witness to the ‘pain of others’.

About the speaker: Phil Scraton PhD, DPhil (Hon), DLaws (Hon) is Professor Emeritus, School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast and has held visiting professorships at Sydney, Australia, Auckland, NZ and Amherst, USA. He holds a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. He has written several books, and as Director of The Hillsborough Project, he was principal author of Hillsborough and After and No Last Rights: The Promotion of Myth and the Denial of Justice in the Aftermath of the Hillsborough Disaster. In 2010 he was appointed to the Hillsborough Independent Panel and is primary author of its report.