The Hybrid Legal Geographies of a War Crimes Court

This paper explores the implications of understanding war crime trials as hybrid legal spaces. Drawing on twelve months of residential fieldwork in the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, it examines the circulation of evidence, the choreography of the court room and the nature and possibilities for legal observation. Analyzing hybrid legal geographies foregrounds the material and embodied nature of trials, illuminating the forms of comportment, categorization and exclusion through which law establishes its legitimacy. Rather than emphasizing separation and distance, the lens of hybridity illuminates the multiple ways in which war crimes trials are grounded in the social and political context of present day Bosnia and Herzegovina. Consequently this analysis traces the disjuncture between the imagined geographies of legal jurisdiction and the material and embodied spaces of trial practices. In conclusion we argue that the establishment of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina illustrates the tensions that emerge when an institution of trial justice is used to strengthen the coherence of a post-conflict state.This paper is based on research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (RES-061-25-0479).This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00045608.2014.892365

The Hybrid Legal Geographies of a War Crimes Court

This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00045608.2014.892365.This paper explores the implications of understanding war crime trials as hybrid legal spaces. Drawing on twelve months of residential fieldwork in the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, it examines the circulation of evidence, the choreography of the court room and the nature and possibilities for legal observation. Analyzing hybrid legal geographies foregrounds the material and embodied nature of trials, illuminating the forms of comportment, categorization and exclusion through which law establishes its legitimacy. Rather than emphasizing separation and distance, the lens of hybridity illuminates the multiple ways in which war crimes trials are grounded in the social and political context of present day Bosnia and Herzegovina. Consequently this analysis traces the disjuncture between the imagined geographies of legal jurisdiction and the material and embodied spaces of trial practices. In conclusion we argue that the establishment of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina illustrates the tensions that emerge when an institution of trial justice is used to strengthen the coherence of a post-conflict state.This paper is based on research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (RES-061-25-0479)

Situating Trust, Values, and Ethics in the Politics of Knowledge Production:An Epistemic Shift in the Co-Production of Studying Violent Extremism

This article aligns with voices arguing for the need for trust-building in the co-production of knowledge on violent extremism. Trying to internalize the concept of violent extremism in local communities comes with its own political nuances in the knowledge-making process. A focus on trust-building approaches is relevant not only to those scholars who work on violent extremism research but also to the broad academic study of conflicts, postconflict, and terrorism. By drawing examples from a workshop conducted on trust-building in violent extremism research, the article presents some of the complexities in violent extremism research fieldwork and how researchers have been building trust with their research participants by navigating complex situations. This entails how different values contradict or merge in co-producing knowledge and the need for ethics to go beyond the institutional research ethical guidelines in understanding “universal values” for building trust in fieldwork

Finding Our Values in Peacebuilding

Over the years and through varied experiences as peace researchers and practitioners, we have developed an interest in understanding what values (as well as ethics and morals) motivate us in our work and how these values can lead to or sabotage trust