University of London, Birkbeck College

Graduate Student, Law

About

I am an MPhil / PhD student, in my second year of part-time study.  I have been investigating human rights activism through a number of dimensions that, in my view, combine to make it unique.  Among these dimensions are enabling the recovery of voice and agency to sufferers of human rights abuses; grappling with the human capacity for evil; and - somehow - finding hope despite the continuing litany of violations of human rights law.

I am currently exploring this through the specific example of slavery in the American antebellum South, and the emergence of the Underground Railroad - an early example of human rights activism in practice at a time when claims to freedom were criminalised by the Fugitive Slave Act. 

In my day job, I am an equality and diversity adviser at Anglia Ruskin University, and can be contacted at faith.marchal@anglia.ac.uk