Institute Fellow: Legacy, Professor Cheryl Lawther has successfully published her new book 'Constructing Victimhood: Beyond Innocence and Guilt in Transitional Justice' with Oxford University Press.  Constructing Victimhood seeks to go 'beyond innocence and guilt' to expand the criminological, victimological, and transitional justice image of who we 'see' as victims, what we 'hear' as experiences of victimisation, and who makes these determinations.

Based on in-depth fieldwork with victims and survivors of conflict, the book argues that the construction, reproduction, and politicisation of victimhood is structured not only by notions of innocence and guilt and the existence of complex victims, but by larger questions concerning the existence of complex hierarchies of victimhood,  the exercise of voice, the role of silence and the silencing of certain variants of victimhood, the politicisation of victims' groups and the impact of unresolved legacies of violent conflict.

Purchase the book here.

Cheryl Lawther, Constructing Victimhood: Beyond Innocence and Guilt in Transitional Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025)