Professor Rachel Kerr is a contemporary historian with over two decades’ experience working on transitional and post-conflict justice and memory, art and reconciliation and international law and war.

Rachel joined King’s in 2003 having previously worked in academic publishing for Polity Press. She holds a BA in International History and Politics from the University of Leeds and an MA and PhD in War Studies from King’s College London.

Rachel has held Fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and the Centre for International Policy Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada. She is currently a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the Royal Historical Society.

Rachel co-convenes the War Crimes Research Group and the Visual and Embodied Methodologies Network (a Faculty-wide initiative with Professor Jelke Boesten (Development Studies) and Professor Cathy McIlwaine (Geography).

Research Interests

• War crimes
• Peace and justice
• Art and reconciliation
• Gender and war

Rachel’s research focuses broadly on how states, societies and individuals contend with legacies of war and atrocity. Her past work has focused on the law and politics of international judicial intervention in the context of the ICTY’s record in the Western Balkans, the Special Court in Sierra Leone and the International Criminal Court’s examination of the UK’s handling of allegations of war crimes in Iraq (2003-9).

Rachel’s current research is focused on the role of art and creative approaches to contending with ongoing and past violence. From 2016-2021, Rachel led a series of AHRC-funded projects exploring arts-based approaches to reconciliation: Art and Reconciliation: Conflict, Culture and Community.

She is also part of a team of researchers exploring how visual and embodied methodologies can be leveraged to address intersectional gendered violence. The ESRC-funded research seeks to create new understandings of what intersectional gendered violence is, does and can be prevented. Rachel is leading a strand of the research focused on gendered violence in the context of war and genocide.

Teaching

• 7SSWM225 Conflict, Rights and Justice
• 7SSWM186 International Law and the Use of Force
• 6SSW3036 War and Genocide
• 6SSW3037 Contending with Legacies of Atrocity

Professor Kerr currently supervises PhD students working on the following topics:

• UK war crimes prosecution
• Justice and reintegration in post-conflict Central African Republic
• Anglo-American Diplomacy, Human Rights and the Slave Trade
• Arts and Reconciliation in South Africa
• Atrocity Prevention
• Post-conflict education and transitional justice in Sri Lanka

Publications

Books

• Goodman, M, Kerr, R & Moran, M (eds) 2023, An Introduction to War Studies. Edward Elgar.
• Kerr, RC, Redwood, H & Gow, AJW (eds) 2021, Reconciliation After War: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective. Contemporary Security Studies, Routledge.
• Gow, J, Dijxhoorn, E, Kerr, RC & Verdirame, G (eds) 2019, Routledge Handbook of War, Law and Technology. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315111759

Articles and book chapters

• Kerr, R 2024, 'Curating a “Living Museum.” Art and Justice Interactions at the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina', The Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding. https://doi.org/10.1080/17502977.2024.2303878
• Kerr, R 2023, Art, Truth, Reconciliation and Resistance: Reaching Out in Sierra Leone and Canada. in F Gantheret, N Guibert & S Stolk (eds), Art and Human Rights: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Contemporary Issues. Edward Elgar, London, pp. 231-247.
• Kerr, RC 2022, Genocide and the Limits of Transitional Justice. in D Bloxham & D Moses (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies. Oxford University Press; Oxford.
• Kostovicova, D, Kerr, R, Fairey, T, Redwood, H, Sokolic, I & Subotic, J 2022, 'The ‘Digital Turn’ in Transitional Justice Research: Evaluating Image and Text as Data in the Western Balkans', Comparative Southeast European Studies, vol. 70, no. 1, pp. 24-46. https://doi.org/10.1515/soeu-2021-0055
• Kerr, RC 2021, Fabricating Reconciliation in Canada. in J Boesten & H Scanlon (eds), Gender, Transitional Justice and Memorial Arts : Global Perspectives on Commemoration and Mobilization. Routlege, pp. 155-171. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003174462-11
• Kuhrt, N & Kerr, R 2021, 'The International Criminal Court, preliminary examinations, and the Security Council: Kill or cure?', Journal of Global Faultlines, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 172-185. https://doi.org/10.13169/jglobfaul.8.2.0172
• Kerr, RC 2020, Art and Reconciliation. in O Richmond & G Visoka (eds), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan. <https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-030-11795-5_15-1>
• Kerr, R 2020, 'Art, Aesthetics, Justice, and Reconciliation: What can art do?', AJIL Unbound, vol. 114, pp. 123-127. https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2020.24
• Fairey, T & Kerr, R 2020, 'What Works? Creative approaches to transitional justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina', International Journal Of Transitional Justice, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 142–164. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijtj/ijz031

Other

• Kerr, R 2022, ’Banksy in Ukraine: how his defiant new works offer hope’ The Conversation , 22 November 2022.
• Banksy in Ukraine: how his defiant new works offer hope (theconversation.com)
• Fairey, T, Kerr, R, Petrovic, J & Gow, J 2020, New Bearings in Post-Conflict Evaluation: A Principle-Based Approach. King's College London, London. https://doi.org/10.18742/pub01-041
• Behzadi , NE, Boesten, J, Kerr, R, McIlwaine, C, de Orellana, P, Peake, J & Redwood, H 2019, Art and Exclusion: Visual and Embodied Methodologies Network Exhibition Catalogue .. https://doi.org/10.18742/pub01-031

For a full list of research outputs, please visit King’s PURE research portal.