Public international law scholar Professor Vasuki Nesiah from New York University will offer a critical re-examination of the issue of reparations when she delivers the annual lecture for Kent Law School’s Centre for Critical International Law on Thursday 23 March.

The talk will begin in Eliot Lecture Theatre 2 (ELT2) at 18.00 and will be preceded by a reception in Eliot Foyer from 17.00.

In her talk, entitled ‘Reparations: The jagged time of catastrophe’ Professor Nesiah will suggests new perspectives for a discussion of reparations by looking again at claims made throughout history.

Professor Nesiah  said: ‘The Magistrate, the official custodian of justice and the rule of law in J M Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, confesses that I am the same man I always was; but time has broken. The call for reparations is a call for recognition that time has broken  that it has fragmented and accumulated differently across history and geography in constituting our subjectivity. It is a recognition that we are located not in the smooth recurrent spinning time of the cycle of the seasons but in the jagged time of rise and fall, of beginning and end, of catastrophe. International law often claims the mantle of justice by dressing the jagged time of catastrophe as the smooth cycle of seasons. This paper is part of a larger project rethinking that narrative and exploring how we may reframe the discussion of reparations by examining reparations claims across different historical contexts, from proxi mate human rights abuses to the legacies of slavery and colonialism.’

Professor Nesiah teaches human rights, law and social theory at NYU. Her main areas of research include the law and politics of international human rights and humanitarianism, with a particular focus on transitional justice.