Dr Rachel Seoighe’s work is concerned with state violence, resistance, memory and abolition. Working from a decolonial, feminist perspective, her research has primarily focused on the legacies of civil war in Sri Lanka and the closure of London’s Holloway Prison.
Rachel is SSPSSR's Athena SWAN champion and EDI lead. She is founder and leader of the division's Reflexive Teaching Working Group and co-chair of the Visual and Sensory Research Cluster.
Rachel’s research is informed by and actively contributes to activism and civil society resistance. She works closely with Tamil human rights organisations and her research on Sri Lankan state denial, atrocity and conflict memory contributes to accountability efforts and the struggle for justice. Her recent work focuses on Tamil diaspora memory practices and the role of British mercenaries in the Sri Lankan war.
Rachel's collaboration with Dr Carly Guest - as academics and members of Reclaim Holloway - explores the memory and meaning of Holloway as a lived space, contributing to the field of carceral geographies, which explores the spatialities of punishment and the emotional impact of confinement. Their work adopts abolition feminist frames and explores the potential of creative methods in generating 'abolitionist affect' in response to the materialities and lived experience of imprisonment.
Rachel also writes, teaches and thinks about border criminologies, ‘race’ and racialisation, postcolonial and decolonial thought, and social and transformative justice.
Rachel teaches a popular module on State Crime and Resistance and contributes to teaching across a range of other modules at undergraduate level. At postgraduate level, she convenes a course on Prisons and Penal Policy.
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