The Boston College Center for Human Rights & International Justice is proud to announce that M. Brinton Lykes, Center Associate Director and Lynch School of Education Professor of Community-Cultural Psychology, has been named Co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Transitional Justice, effective January 1, 2016. Professor Lykes will join Hugo van der Merwe, Director of Research at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in Cape Town, South Africa, as Co-Editors-in-Chief of the journal, for which Lykes currently serves as an editorial board member.
The journal publishes high quality refereed articles in the rapidly growing field of transitional justice, which it defines as “the study of those strategies employed by states and international institutions to deal with a legacy of human rights abuses, and to effect social reconstruction in the wake of widespread violence.” Representative topics covered by the journal include: truth commissions, universal jurisdiction, post-conflict social reconciliation, victim and perpetrator studies, international and domestic prosecutions, institutional transformation, vetting, memorialization, reparations and ex-combatant reintegration.
In addition, the journal works to facilitate dialogue among academics, practitioners and policy makers and to provide a space for increased contributions by professionals and practitioners from the global South, while contributing to capacity-building initiatives with and by these authors.
In selecting Lykes for the position, the journal cited her relevant work related to transitional justice. This includes her work prominently in two areas: sexual violence against Mayan women in contexts of armed conflict and post-conflict transitions, and their struggles for truth, justice, healing, and reparations; and human rights violations related to migration, including deportation, focusing on their effects on women and children. In her research in these areas, Lykes is widely recognized for her methodologies employing local cultural resources, the creative arts and participatory action research methodologies to analyze the causes and document the effects of violence suffered.
Additionally, as part of Lykes’ appointment, the Center and the Lynch School will enter into a five-year commitment to the journal, providing institutional and individual support, with the former facilitating annual meetings of the journal’s editorial staff. The journal’s experts in transitional justice, along with Special Issue editors, will also present their work at Boston College to further disseminate their work to faculty and students seeking deeper understandings of the complexities of the many dimensions of transitional justice.