In this event, anthropologist and sociologist Didier Fassin will present key themes from his recent book Death of a Traveller.  

The book engages in a 'counter-investigation' into a fatal encounter between armed French police and a member of the travelling community.  In doing so, it raises deep and troubling questions about the quality of interactions between marginalized communities and official police and judicial processes; and about power, prejudice, and differing constructions of truth.  It will be of interest to lawyers, criminologists, anthropologists and sociologists, and indeed to a general audience.

Meet our speaker and chair

Didier Fassin is the James D. Wolfensohn Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and holds a Direction of Studies in Political and Moral Anthropology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has been appointed to the Chair of Public Health at the Collège de France.

Richard Martin is a graduate of the University of Bristol (LLB) and University of Oxford (MSc, DPhil – New College). He was previously a Fellow at the Department of Law, London School of Economics (2017-9) and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford (2019-20). He has been a consultant for the Law Commission of England and Wales, a visiting fellow at the University of New South Wales and Managing Editor of the Oxford Human Rights Hub Blog. He is a Lord Denning Scholar at Lincoln’s Inn, London.

Christina Varvia is currently a Research Fellow and formerly the Deputy Director of Forensic Architecture. She was trained as an architect and has taught at the Architectural Association. She is currently teaching at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London and pursuing her PhD at Aarhus University where she has received the Novo Nordisk Foundation Mads Øvlisen PhD Scholarship; she is also a Fellow at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. She is a founding member and the chair of the board of Forensis.

Nicola Lacey is School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy. From 1998 to 2010 she held a Chair in Criminal Law and Legal Theory at LSE; she returned to LSE in 2013 after spending three years as Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, and Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the University of Oxford. She has held a number of visiting appointments, most recently at Harvard Law School.  She is an Honorary Fellow of New College Oxford and of University College Oxford; a Fellow of the British Academy; and a member of the Board of Trustees of the British Museum. In 2011 she was awarded the Hans Sigrist Prize by the University of Bern for outstanding scholarship on the function of the rule of law in late modern societies and in 2017 she was awarded a CBE for services to Law, Justice and Gender Politics.  

More about this event

The Department of Law (@LSELaw) is one of the world’s best law schools. In the UK, it was ranked first for research outputs in the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF) and in the top 10 law departments overall by The Complete University Guide in 2020. In the QS World University rankings for 2020, the Department was ranked sixth (out of 200 departments worldwide). Our staff play a major role in helping to shape policy debates, and in the education of current and future lawyers and legal scholars from around the world.

The Mannheim Centre for the Study of Criminology and Criminal Justice is a forum for scholars across the Departments of LSE to engage in research and support teaching of criminology. Members come from the Departments of Law, Sociology, Social Psychology, Social Policy and Methodology.

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Podcast & Video

A podcast of this event is available to download from How To Get Away With Killing? A Social Science Counter-investigation.

A video of this event is available to watch at How To Get Away With Killing? A Social Science Counter-investigation.

Podcasts and videos of many LSE events can be found at the LSE Public Lectures and Events: podcasts and videos channel.