In the early part of 2022, Assistant Professor at the School of Law and Criminology, Dr. Ian Marder spoke and provided training at, and organised, several online and in-person events. Firstly, on 21st January, Ian provided oral evidence at a hearing of the Parliament of Navarra, an autonomous region of Spain, to discuss the drafting of restorative justice legislation. His talk explored the research evidence and existing legal frameworks used in similar jurisdictions. Tim Chapman, Chair of the European Forum for Restorative Justice, also spoke. Later in January, he worked with Ruairí Weiner to delivery training on restorative practices for volunteer peer mentors at Trinity College Dublin as part of the 3Set project.
In February, Ian organised a workshop of the Restorative Justice Pedagogy Network, in collaboration with colleagues from Vermont Law School (USA) and York St. John University (UK). The workshop was entitled ‘Participatory and experiential learning in restorative justice education’, and Ian co-delivered a session at which the over 30 participants designed a training package to assist educators to use circle processes in higher education classrooms.
The video of the February workshop can be found here. You can find a video that the group recorded and published in March to accompany the circle training materials here. If you teach restorative justice or restorative practices in higher education settings and would like to join the network, please email Ian on ian.marder@mu.ie.
In March, Ian spoke as a panellist at two webinars. The first webinar was organised by the Irish branch of GEMME (Groupement Européen des Magistrats pour la Médiation) and focused on the role of the judiciary in enabling restorative justice. At that webinar, Ian spoke alongside judges from the District Court of Ireland and Helena Soleto Muñoz from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. The second webinar was organised by the University of St. Thomas Institute on Restorative Justice and Healing and focused on the pivot to deliver restorative justice and use restorative practices online during COVID. In 2020, Ian published an article on this subject with Prof. Meredith Rossner (ANU) in the International Journal of Restorative Justice. This issue also featured two responses to the paper from American practitioners and a Belgian transitional justice scholar, Prof. Stephan Parmentier.
Also in March, Ian travelled to Belgium to deliver a plenary presentation at an international conference hosted by KU Leuven. This was the final conference of the EU-funded project RE-JUSTICE, on judicial training in restorative justice. Ian spoke to the title ‘Mainstreaming a restorative judicial culture in Europe’, and participated as a panellist in a roundtable, entitled ‘Challenges in the intersection between restorative and criminal justice and the role of the judiciary. You can read more about the RE-JUSTICE project here.
Also in Q1 2022, Ian organised a webinar on cultural change in policing with Deputy Commissioner Shawna Coxon (An Garda Síochána) and policing scholars from Canada and Ireland, and a webinar on restorative community development, in collaboration with several restorative practice partnerships from across Ireland. You can find a write up of the first event here and the second event here.