This is the latest in a series of Mitchell Institute Speaker Events promoting dialogues on themes in peace, security and justice which engage with the wide-ranging, interdisciplinary research interests of Institute Fellows and PhD students.

To book your place please RSVP to mitchell.institute@qub.ac.uk by noon on Thursday 26 November 2020.

Speaker: Dr Eamonn Jordan (Associate Professor in Drama Studies, University College Dublin).

Chair: Dr Eva Urban-Devereux (Senior Research Fellow, Mitchell Institute, QUB). 

Eamonn Jordan will outline his new book, Justice in the Plays and Films of Martin McDonagh (2020), in which he utilises the critical writings of Michael Sandel, Steven Pinker, Julia Kristeva, and, in particular, Amartya Sen on violence, justice and the law. He will argue that justice in McDonagh’s work is neither denied, dismissed nor indicative of some anarchic post-justice scenario; rather its articulation substantiates the necessities and virtues of justice. He identifies four distinctive manifestations of justice in McDonagh’s plays and films. Firstly, agents of the state in these works are invariably incompetent and corrupt. Secondly, some characters are determined to substitute in rival systems of justice. Thirdly, a variety of characters attempt to take justice into their own hands, compelled to do so based on a perception of deficits in the realisation of justice more broadly. Finally, justice in terms of criminal investigation, adjudication, and establishment of guilt or innocence fails on so many fronts giving rise to multiple miscarriages of justice.

Dr Eamonn Jordan is Associate Professor in Drama Studies at the School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin. His books include: The Feast of Famine: The Plays of Frank McGuinness (1997), Dissident Dramaturgies: Contemporary Irish Theatre (2010) From Leenane to LA: The Theatre and Cinema of Martin McDonagh (2014), The Theatre and Films of Conor McPherson: Conspicuous Communities (2019), and Justice in the Plays and Films of Martin McDonagh (2020). Find out more about Dr Eamonn Jordan. 

Dr Eva Urban-Devereux is a Senior Research Fellow at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen’s University Belfast. an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Irish Studies, Queen's University Belfast, a Research Associate of the Centre for Breton and Celtic Studies, University of Rennes 2, and a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. Find out more about Dr Eva Urban-Devereux..

Series Convenor: Dr Zaheer Kazmi