Kingsley Abbott will be talking about the significance of research to Human Rights lawyers; the surprises and challenges of moving from his life as a lawyer into an academic setting; and what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights means in its 75th Anniversary year.

In conversation with Stephanie Jones, Professor of Literature and Law at the University of Southampton and CoDirector of Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities.

SIAH Public Life series abstract:
Arts and Humanities have always been crucial to the idea of the 'public life': the public is valorised as the realm of collective debate and decisionmaking, of community and solidarity, of art and culture. Such concepts, of course, have always been contested and never more so than right now. The electronic capture of the commons, the removal of boundaries between work and home, the policing of public spaces, the onslaught of the culture wars, the hold of big data and surveillance, the spectacles of populist politics have all changed the meanings, the spaces and the limits of the public sphere.
SIAH: Public Life draws a range of leading intellectuals into conversation about what the ideal of the 'public life' can mean to Arts and Humanities researchers and disciplines in the twentyfirst century.

Speaker Bio:
Professor Kingsley Abbott is an experienced international criminal and human rights lawyer with more than 20 years experience in international nongovernmental organisations, the United Nations and domestic legal practice. Previously, for nine years, he was based in Thailand where he served the International Commission of Jurists as the Director of Global Accountability and International Justice. During this time, he developed and led numerous human rights and rule of law initiatives in Asia and around the world. Prior to that, he worked as a Senior Legal Adviser at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia and as Trial Counsel in the Office of the Prosecutor at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the Hague. He started his career in his home country of Aotearoa New Zealand, where he mainly practised as a criminal barrister under a leading King’s Counsel.