PhD Series – Daniela Suarez Vargas

​Daniela is a second-year PhD student in Law at Queen's University Belfast (UK), a scholar of the AHRC Northern Bridge Consortium's doctoral training programme (UK), and a qualified lawyer in Colombia. Her PhD project analyses the impact of legal narratives of criminalisation and victimisation of sexual violence on the recognition of the victim status of combatants who suffered this form of violence within their own armed group. Daniela holds a Master in Law (LLM) with distinction from Queen's University Belfast and a first-class (equivalent) undergraduate degree in law with a minor in criminal law from Universidad del Rosario (Colombia). She has engaged in conducting academic research on international criminal law, sexual and gender-based violence, transitional justice in the contexts of Latin America (particularly Colombia) and Northern Ireland, international human rights law, non-state armed groups, modern slavery, colonialism and green criminology. She has published academic papers on international criminal law, human rights and postcolonialism. She has participated in the drafting of amicus curiae briefs for the International Criminal Court Office of Victims and the ICC Appeals Chamber in the cases of Laurent Gbagbo and Bosco Ntganda, and the situation in Afghanistan. She has participated in the drafting of consultation reports for the UN Special Rapporteur on transitional justice measures and colonial contexts and the report for the Northern Irish Department of Justice on the modern slavery strategy 2021-22. In this episode we discuss Daniela's PhD research on Colombian transitional justice narratives of criminalisation and victimhood in the context of sexual violence within armed groups. Orcid profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8534-4931 Twitter profile: @Daniela_suarezv