March 2024 Newsletter

Killian O’ Dochartaigh is an architect with an interest in post-conflict/disaster built environments. He was awarded a Bonnart Trust scholarship in 2014, and undertook a PhD in Architecture in UCL from 2014 until 2017. He has recently passed his viva. He's currently a full time lecturer at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh.

What was your thesis about?
"My PhD by Design thesis examined how Rwanda, in emerging from the effects of the 1994 Genocide, under the trajectory of the current government VISION for the built environment excludes many low income communities due to their ethnicity. I first examined how this new Vision for the built environment severed human settlement patterns from the landscape, and increased struggles for land and livelihoods, particularly for hunter-gatherer and potter indigenous communities. By working in collaboration with these communities, we collectively speculated upon alternative, shared multi-species and therefore more inclusive and tolerant design futures for Rwanda."

How did it feel like to pass your viva?
"Finishing my PhD and passing my viva was a wonderful feeling. Firstly, I've been working on this research for a number of years across multiple countries, had fathered two young girls and taken on a new job, so it was a huge relief to have it completed! Secondly, it was such an incredible feeling to have my research endorsed by others in the field. I'd been looking at this for so long in isolation that I was continuously doubting myself and the research itself. The viva was a really engaging and enjoyable experience."

What are you currently working on?
"Right now, I'm a full time lecturer at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh. I teach and coordinate the one year MSc and Architecture and Urban Design program in which my students are working within my hometown of Derry, in Northern Ireland, and they're trying to understand how the long duree of conflict has contributed to the uneven spatial development of the city and how we might resuscitate the University of Derry vision by the local peace activist and politician John Hume as a means to construct socially and ecologically just more futures in the face of Brexit and a new calls for a hard border."

March 2024 Newsletter

Olivia is a MSc student in Gender and Sexuality at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her interests lie in the intersection of gender theory, policy and law, with a particular focus on women in detention settings.

Olivia is interested in feminist legal practice and her MSc research will focus on the experiences of women in immigration removal centres, and their access - or lack thereof - to complaint mechanisms and processes, together with the social and cultural obstacles associated with ‘complaining women’.

October 2023 Newsletter

Can you tell us what your PhD was about?

"Hi! My name is Fatima Kola and I was a Bonnart-Braunthal scholar at University College, London in the faculty of laws. I finished my PhD in 2011, and my PhD was on the international law of torture. I looked at how nation-states respond to terrorist threats, and how they operate interrogation of suspected terrorists around those threats. I looked at Israel and the occupied territories, Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States after 9/11. And my PhD asked, first of all, whether torture could be justified. and then secondly, if it couldn't, which I found that it couldn't, how the international law on torture might be adjusted or changed so that nation-states could not use interrogation that arguably rises to the level of torture as a tactic in encountering terrorism."

Tell us what you're doing now.

"After I finished my PhD, I did a pupillage at Garden Court Chambers in London, where I primarily did criminal defense work, but I also did some amount of employee rights, immigration, and some international human rights law, including submitting a brief to the Colombian Supreme Court, an amicus brief on torture with other members of Garden Court. After a few years of practicing as a barrister, I decided to undertake a career change, and I applied to MFA programs in the US for creative writing. I ended up doing an MFA* in fiction at the University of Texas at Austin, and after that time wrote short stories, worked at the O'Henry Prize, which is an American short story prize, and then did a Stegner Fellowship in fiction at Stanford University. At the moment, I'm a writer in residence at the Department of Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where I will be for the year. And surprisingly, I feel as though my doctoral work and my fiction writing have come full circle because for this year, I am teaching a class on medicine and literature, and as part of that class, we've been looking at fiction about detainees. We've been reading critical theory about pain and torture. And it feels at this point in time that my creative work and my doctoral work have managed to combine, which I'm really happy about."

*MFA: Master of Fine Art

October 2023 Newsletter

I will be studying MA in Contemporary History and Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, 2024-2026.

I have a keen interest in the historical roots of modern conflicts and the efforts that governments and communities make to overcome war-time sectarianism and post-conflict woes. I am drawn to studying how cross-community adhesion to peaceful coexistence influences peacebuilding opportunities towards post-war reconciliation and recovery.

I would like to explore the impact of intercultural communication on countering historical narratives that fuel the politics of prejudice, a powerful barrier to coexistence. My research also aims to investigate theory and practices of policies that intend to assist the strengthening of cohesive communities committed to long-term conflict resolution.

I am eager to discover more about the global climate crisis and the strategic challenges it poses to social peace and sustainable security when left unaddressed, especially in areas where desertification and droughts continue to hit farming communities at an alarming rate.

I completed my BA in Journalism at the University of Leeds in 2012. My undergraduate dissertation assessed the impact of embedded journalism on conflict reporting. Since graduation, I have worked as a journalist and media analyst.

In my spare time I enjoy spending time with my family and socialising with friends. I like improvisational cooking, creating new dishes and listening to music of all types. I cycle on and off road and enjoy exploring rural greenery. I watch feature films at the cinema when time allows and continue to be fascinated by observational documentaries.

October 2023 Newsletter

James (he/him) is a PhD student in History at Birkbeck College, University of London.

His research employs queer oral histories to examine the life and work of England’s queer teachers from the post-partial decriminalisation era of the 1970s to the repeal of Section 28 in 2003.

In this way, the project historicises this particular intersection of the professional and the (putatively) personal and provides the first detailed and sustained account of the ways in which queer teachers' lives were shaped by factors within and outside of the school environment over this 30-year period.

The research is motivated by his own experiences as a gay secondary school teacher in East London. Prior to his PhD, James was a school teacher, and has been a policy advisor within the Civil Service since 2018 where he worked on forestry and the UK Net Zero Strategy. In 2020, he attained an MA in European History at Birkbeck having been awarded an Eric Hobsbawm Postgraduate Scholarship. His MA research explored mid-century print media representations of queer people in public service occupations.

He passionately believes in the importance of queer space and is an advocate for queer-led social organising to improve LGBT+ health and educational provision and outcomes. He is a mentor with MOSAIC LGBT+ Young Persons' Trust and a member of KNOCKOUT LGBTQ+ boxing club.