The Centre for Criminal Justice at the University of Limerick will hold a one-day conference, Victims’ Rights: An Agenda for Change on September 11th, 2015. Directive 2012/29/EU establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime (The Victims’ Rights Directive) must be implemented into the national laws of all EU Member States by the 16th of November 2015. In light of the implementation of this Directive, this one-day conference at the University of Limerick is timely and will provide a forum to facilitate discussion about the requirements of the Directive and the needs of victims of crime more generally and how these may be best met in this jurisdiction. The conference will be of interest to a wide variety of criminal justice stakeholders including members of An Garda Síochána and members of the judiciary and legal professions, as well representatives from interest groups and academics.

Plenary speakers at the conference include: The Honourable Mr Justice Peter Charleton (Supreme Court); Professor Caroline Fennell (University College Cork); Professor Jonathan Doak (University of Durham); Ms. Ellen O’Malley Dunlop (Dublin Rape Crisis Centre) and; Ms. Joan Deane (ADVIC).

Call for Papers:

The conference will also include a number of parallel discussion panels which will focus on key themes of the Directive (participation, protection and information), as well as focussing on the implications of the Directive for different victims groups (e.g. victims of sexual  and domestic violence, victims with a disability, families of the victims of homicide etc). We are currently inviting abstracts for these parallel sessions.
If you are interested in speaking at the conference, please provide a proposed title for your paper and an abstract of no more than 300 words, along with a brief biography to victimsconference2015@gmail.com by Friday, May 15th, 2015.

Conference Organisers: Dr. Susan Leahy and Dr. Margaret Fitzgerald-O’Reilly.