- About
- Convenors
- Programme 2022 - 2023
About
Complicity Studies is a graduate lead interdisciplinary network which aims to create a space in which academics can converge to examine concepts of complicity. The idea that ‘everyone’s involved’ in wrongdoing and historical injustice has emerged more frequently in recent years, with increasing discussions around the role of the seemingly passive individual in racial inequality, legacies of colonialism and the climate crisis.
Complicity is studied in virtually all subjects in the humanities and social sciences. From Philosophy of Law debating individual accountability to Social Psychology exploring the dynamics of groups, these fields have engaged with and modelled the concepts of indirect participation and multiple forms of guilt. From within their own boundaries, however, each discipline and historical context has created its own definition of complicity. The aim of this network is to create an opportunity for those models and definitions to interact and converge. By providing a bi-weekly seminar from a different discipline or historical context, with the addition of film screenings and literary readings, it will provide space for scholars and students to think through these complex and entangled forms of guilt.
Convenors
Convenors
- Ana Leticia Blasi Magini (PhD student, Law, Cambridge)
- Sophie Dixon (PhD student, Criminology, Cambridge)
- Danny Shanahan (PhD Student, English, Cambridge)
Ana Leticia Blasi Magini is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, developing a thesis on individual culpability and collective participation in international crime. She has an LLM degree from the University of Cambridge and a law degree from the University of London. Before starting her PhD, Ana worked for two years as a legal officer at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Ana taught LLM workshops in international criminal law at the University of Cambridge and was a lecturer at the University of Tallinn in international humanitarian law and cyber warfare. She has also served as a research assistant at the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, contributing to a research initiative on the protection of the environment in relation to international peace and security.
Sophie Dixon is a PhD candidate at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where she researches Network-Based Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE). Sophie completed a BSc in Psychology at the University of Birmingham in 2018 and an MPhil in Criminological Research at Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 2019. Sophie’s current research, funded by the ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership, focuses on the co-offending networks perpetrating CSE; their composition, modus operandi and network dynamics.
Danny Shanahan is a third-year PhD at the University of Cambridge. He completed his BA and MA in Comparative Literature at King’s College London, with his MA thesis concentrating on governmental complicity in sectarian violence in Irish and Indian partition fictions. His PhD project examines the relationship between literature and emergency law in Kashmir and Northern Ireland. He is one of the organisers of the graduate postcolonial and related literatures research group at Cambridge.
Faculty advisors
- Antje du Bois Pedain (Professor in Criminal Law and Philosophy; Director, Centre for Penal Theory and Penal Ethics (IoC))
- Paolo Campana (Associate Professor in Criminology and Complex Networks, Institute of Criminology)
Programme 2022 - 2023
Easter Term 2023
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The law of complicity and joint enterprise 26 Apr 2023 17:00 - 19:00, Room GR04, English Faculty Library, Cambridge CB3 9DP Matthew Dyson (Oxford) |
Why people believe things that aren’t true, and what to do about it 10 May 2023 17:00 - 19:00, Room GR04, English Faculty Library, Cambridge CB3 9DP Jon Roozenbeek (Cambridge) |
South Africa – political amnesties and transitional justice 24 May 2023 17:00 - 19:00, Room GR04, English Faculty Library, Cambridge CB3 9DP Antje du Bois-Pedan (Cambridge) |
Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov – A Christian response to the question of guilt and responsibility 7 Jun 2023 17:00 - 19:00, Room GR04, English Faculty Library, Cambridge CB3 9DP Simon Ravenscroft (Cambridge) |
Lent Term 2023
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CANCELLED | Complicity studies seminar 1 Feb 2023 17:00 - 19:00, Room GR04, English Faculty Library, Cambridge |
POSTPONED | International law and colonial power 15 Feb 2023 17:00 - 19:00, Room GR04, English Faculty Library, Cambridge CB3 9DP John Reynolds (Maynooth) |
POSTPONED | Uncommon wealth: Britain and the aftermath of empire 1 Mar 2023 17:00 - 19:00, Room GR04, English Faculty Library, Cambridge CB3 9DP Kojo Koram (Birkbeck) |
Michaelmas Term 2022
Complicity studies |
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Introducing complicity and its challenges 5 Oct 2022 17:00 - 19:00, Room GR04, English Faculty Library, Cambridge Michael Neu (Brighton), Robin Dunford (Brighton) |
Complicity and international law 19 Oct 2022 17:00 - 19:00, Room GR04, English Faculty Library, Cambridge Christopher Greenwood (Cambridge) |
The Act of Killing (2012), film screening and discussion 2 Nov 2022 17:00 - 19:00, English Faculty Library, GR04 Film screeing |
Partition violence and complicity in Pakistan and Palestine 16 Nov 2022 17:00 - 19:00, Room GR04, English Faculty Library, West Road, Cambridge Raniya Hosain (Cambridge) |