Kent Law School Professor Nick Grief is sharing his expertise in international airspace law and human rights at today’s inaugural hearing of the Airspace Tribunal, in London.
The Airspace Tribunal is an innovative research collaboration between Professor Grief and visual artist Shona Illingworth (a Reader in Fine Art at Kent’s School of Music and Fine Art). Its aim is to consider a new human right to protect peoples’ freedom to exist without physical or psychological threat from above.
Chaired by Marta Michalowska (Director of The Wapping Project), today’s speakers include:
- Kevin Bales (Nottingham): leading authority on contemporary slavery and on the relationship between slavery, globalisation and environmental destruction
- Zrinka Bralo: CEO of Migrants Organise, a national organisation that provides platform for migrants and refugees
- Conor Gearty (LSE): professor of human rights law who has published extensively on terrorism, civil liberties and human rights
- Nick Grief (Kent/Doughty Street Chambers): law professor specialising in airspace and human rights law and member of the legal team that represented the Marshall Islands before the ICJ in nuclear disarmament cases against India, Pakistan and the UK
- Andrew Hoskins (Glasgow): media sociologist known for his work on media, memory and conflict
- Shona Illingworth (Kent): artist whose video and sound installations investigate memory, cultural erasure and structures of power in situations of social tension and conflict
- Catherine Loveday (Westminster): neuropsychologist and expert on memory
- Melanie Klinkner (Bournemouth): transitional justice scholar majoring in international criminal justice with a background in philosophy, anthropology and biology
- Anson Mackay (UCL): leading environmental geographer and expert on human and climatic impacts on some of the world’s most iconic freshwater ecosystems, who will focus on geoengineering and climate change
- William Merrin (Swansea): a specialist in digital media and author of ‘Digital War’
- Mark Sealy: Curator and Director, Autograph ABP, London, interested in the relationship between photography and social change, identity politics, race, and human rights.
Counsel to the Tribunal Kirsty Brimelow QC will be questioning the speakers after each group of presentations before inviting further questions from the audience. The audience, comprising a diverse group of invited experts, Doughty Street Chambers barristers and clients, members of the public and the media, will be the Airspace Tribunal’s judges, challenging the traditional state-centric view of how international law is created. They will cast their vote for or against recognition of the proposed human right using technology to be explained on the day.
The proceedings will be filmed and transcribed to form the drafting history of the proposed human right, which will be made available on the Airspace Tribunal website. The Airspace Tribunal will also form a central part of Shona’s new body of work – Topologies of Air, commissioned by The Wapping Project, which will include a video and sound installation. This artwork will be exhibited at The Power Plant, Toronto in 2020 and will then tour internationally in order to stimulate further public discussion.
The event, supported by the University of Kent, The Wapping Project and Doughty Street Chambers, is taking place at Doughty Street Chambers in Doughty Street today from 10am – 4.30pm.
Professor Grief specialises in international law and human rights. He teaches Public International Law and EU Law at Kent Law School and also practises at the Bar from Doughty Street Chambers. He was a member of the legal team which represented the Marshall Islands in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in cases against India, Pakistan and the UK concerning the obligation to negotiate in good faith towards nuclear disarmament. The team was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for its work in the ICJ.
Shona Illingworth is a Reader in Fine Art at Kent’s School of Music and Fine Art. She is a Scottish-Danish artist who works across a range of media including video, sound, photography and drawing. She is known for her immersive video and multi-channel sound installations, and evocative, research-led practice in which she explores the dynamic processes of memory and construction of histories in situations of social tension and conflict.
Image credit: Flight Path with Ash – Blue, North Atlantic Airspace, Working Still (2017) by Shona Illingworth. With thanks to NATS.