Dr Christalla Yakinthou

• PhD (University of Western Australia)
• Masters-equivalent diploma of European Public Law (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)
• BA, Hons (University of Western Australia)

Dr Christalla Yakinthou is a Birmingham Fellow, and member of the Institute for Conflict, Co-operation and Security in the University of Birmingham's POLSIS department.

Her areas of research interest include transitional justice and conflict transformation, the protection of human rights, political design for conflict societies, power-sharing, and the role of ethnic conflict and historical memory in political architecture. She has an active interest in the politics of the MENA and Mediterranean region.

She is firmly committed to bridging the divide between academia and practice. Prior to her appointment at Birmingham, she worked extensively in transitional justice and conflict transformation. Between 2009 and 2011 she established and managed the International Center for Transitional Justice's (ICTJ) Cyprus Program. In 2011 she moved to ICTJ's MENA headquarters in Beirut, where she primarily managed projects on memory and conflict in Lebanon. She has provided policy advice for international organisations, large NGOs, and a number of governments.

She is also co-founder of the Bluestocking Institute for Global Peace and Justice, an Australia-based NGO fostering dialogue on issues of global importance including peacebuilding, sustainable development, and social movements.

Research and dissertation proposals that fit within the following categories are welcomed:

• Conflict transformation, particularly post-settlement;
• Transitional justice both in theory and practice, and transitions in the MENA region;
• The relationship between constitutional design and transitional justice;
• Power sharing;
• Cypriot, Lebanese, and Tunisian politics and conflicts;
• The right to truth in international law and practice, and issues around enforced disappearance and missing people during conflict.

Reaching out to enemy communities after conflict: Christalla Yakinthou at TEDxUniversityofBirmingham

Research interests:

Conflict transformation and transitional justice

• Post-settlement conflict transformation processes
• The relationship between top-down and bottom-up perceptions of transitional justice
• Transitional justice in the MENA region

Transitional justice and constitutional design

• The place of transitional justice in constitutional design
• The relationship between power-sharing and transitional justice

The legacies of ethnic and power conflicts

• The Greece-Turkey-Cyprus conflicts
• The impact of the conflicts in Lebanon

The right to truth in law and politics

• Enforced disappearance and its impact on societies and perpetuating conflict
• The right to truth and enforced disappearance