Professor Penny Green, BA (Hons) (ANU), MPhil, PhD (Cambridge)

Professor of Law and Globalisation
Room Number: Mile End
Profile
Penny Green is Professor of Law and Globalisation at Queen Mary University of London, and has been appointed as Head of the Law Department from September 2018. She joined Queen Mary University of London in September 2014 following seven years as Professor of Law and Criminology at King’s College London. She studied Psychology, Anthropology and Sociology at the Australian National University before undertaking graduate studies and a doctorate in Criminology at the University of Cambridge.
Professor Green has published extensively on state crime theory (including her monograph with Tony Ward, State Crime: Governments, Violence and Corruption), state violence, Turkish criminal justice and politics, ‘natural’ disasters, genocide, mass forced evictions, and resistance to state violence. She has a long track record of researching in hostile environments and has conducted fieldwork in the UK, Turkey, Egypt, Kurdistan, Palestine/Israel, Tunisia and Myanmar. She has secured ~£3,000,000 of Research Council funding, including four major grants from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
Professor Green is Founder and Director of the award winning International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) - a multi-disciplinary international initiative to collate, analyse and disseminate research-based knowledge about criminal state practices and resistance to them. ISCI is based at QMUL and partnered with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, Ulster University and the University of New South Wales (UNSW).
Professor Green’s most recent projects include a comparative study of civil society resistance to state crime in Turkey, Tunisia, Colombia, Papua New Guinea, Kenya and Myanmar; Myanmar’s genocide against its Muslim ethnic Rohingya population; and forced evictions in Palestine/Israel. Her seminal work, with ISCI colleagues, on the Rohingya genocide (Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar 2015; and Genocide Achieved, Genocide Continues: Myanmar’s Annihilation Of The Rohingya 2018) has drawn widespread global attention.
She has been a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at UNSW and Ulster University, and Adjunct Professor at Birzeit University. She has also held visiting fellowships at the University of Melbourne, Latrobe University, Monash University, and Bosphorus University; is a Trustee of the People’s Palace Projects, the Democratic Progress Institute and was a Trustee of the Howard League for Penal Reform for eight years. She is a member of the ESRC Peer Review College, co-editor in Chief of the international journal State Crime and Editor of the Routledge State Crime monograph series.
Research
Publications
Books and Edited Collections
- Palestine, Palestinians and Israel’s State Criminality (edited with Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian) Pluto Journals
- Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar (2015) (with MacManus, T. and A. de la Cour Venning) London: International State Crime Initiative 100pp ISBN 978-0-9934574
- Law and Outsiders: Norms, Processes and ‘Othering’ in the 21st Century’ (with C. Murphy) (2011) Oxford: Hart
- State Crime (2005) Special Issue: British Journal of Criminology, 2005, Vo. 45, No. 4, pp 434–445
- Criminology and Archaeology: Studies in the Looting of Antiquities (eds) (2009) Oxford: Hart (with Simon Mackenzie)
- State Crime: Governments, Violence and Corruption, 2004 (with Tony Ward), Pluto Press: London (Portuguese, Chinese and Indonesian translations)
- Drugs, Trafficking and Criminal Policy: the Scapegoat Solution, Waterside Press: Winchester, 1998, 208 pp. (ISBN 1 872 870 33 3)
- Drug Couriers, 1991, Howard League: London, 48pp. (ISBN 0 903683 12 1)
- The Enemy Without: Policing and Class Consciousness in the 1984-85 Miners' Strike, 1990, Open University Press: Milton Keynes, 235 pp. (ISBN 0 335 09273)
- Criminal Justice in Transition: Criminal Policy-Making Toward the New Millennium, 2000 (with A. Rutherford), Hart: Oxford 301pp. (ISBN1 84113 188 1)
- Drug Couriers: a New Perspective, 1996, Quartet Books: London, 202 pp. (ISBN 0 7043 7103 0).
Forthcoming
- Encounters with repression: Civil resistance in uncivil states 2017 (with Tony Ward) London: Routledge
- Condemned to Nowhere: the genocide of Burma’s Rohingya 2017 (with Thomas MacManus and Alicia De La Cour Venning) New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Recent Journal Articles and Book Chapters
- ‘Understanding State Crime’, (2016) with Tony Ward, Oxford Handbook of Criminology Oxford: OUP
- ‘Evicting Palestine’ (2016), with Amelia Smith, in State Crime Journal Special Issue: Palestine, Palestinians and Israeli State Crime (eds Green, P. and Shalhoub-Kervorkian,N.) Vol. 5, No.1
- ‘Law, the State and the Dialectics of State Crime’ (2016) in Critical Criminology, Vol. 24, No. 2
- ‘Civil Society And State Crime: Repression, Resistance And Transition in Burma and Tunisia’ (2014) with Ward, T. in Chambliss, W. J. and Moloney, C. J. (eds.) State Crime: Critical Concepts in Criminology, New York: Routledge
- ‘Enclosing the Commons: Predatory capital and forced evictions in Burma and PNG’ (2014), with Lasslett, K. and Sherwood, A. in Pickering, S (ed.) Routledge Handbook on Migration and Crime London: Routledge
- ‘The Barbarism of Indifference: sabotage, resistance and state corporate crime’ (2014) with Lasslett, K. and Stanczak, D., Theoretical Criminology 2015, Vol. 19(4) 514–533
- ‘Islamophobia: Burma’s Racist Fault-line’ in Race and Class October–December 2013; 55
- ‘The Roboski Massacre’ E-Testimony Case Study
- ‘State Crime: A Dialectical View’ (2012) (with T. Ward) in M. Maguire, R. Morgan, and Reiner, R.(eds) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology
- ‘States, Crime and Violence’ in (2010) Sistema Penal & Violência, Porto Alegre, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 1-14, jul./dez
- Civil Society, Resistance and State Crime’ (2012) in L. Stanley and J. McCulloch State Crime and Resistance London: Sage
- ‘State-Building and the Logic of Violence in Iraq’ (2009) (with T. Ward) Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention
- ‘The Transformation of Violence in Iraq' (with T. Ward) British Journal of Criminology (2009) 49(5): 609-627.
Recent Media Articles
- Open Democracy 2015 ‘Death of a Peace process: the return of martial Law to Turkey’ 29 August 2015
- The Independent 2015 ‘Aung San Suu Kyi's silence on the genocide of Rohingya Muslims is tantamount to complicity’
- Open Democracy 2015 ‘Syrian activists are repairing the fabric of civil society, even as it comes undone’
- Open Democracy 2014 ‘State Crime in Turkey: the Roboski Massacre’ (with Saniye Karakas) 12 May 2014
- Middle East Eye 2014 ‘The Dark politics of Turkish Criminal Justice: the case of Gulsum Koc’
- Open Democracy 2014 ‘State Crime, Civil society and Resistance: Lessons from Tunisia’
- Open Democracy 2014 ‘Introducing State Crime and Resistance’.
PhD Supervision
Professor Green has supervised over 25 students to completion and is currently supervising:
- Saeb Kasm, PhD: ‘Fighting State Corruption and Transnational Organized Crime: A Global, Technology-integrated Human Rights Based Approach’
- Saniye Karakas ‘State Crime and the Mechanics of Impunity’
- Khalid Khedri ‘Interrogating the Concept of Sovereignty in International Law’
- Angela Sherwood, PhD: ‘Urban Displacement, Settlement and the Right to Housing in Post – Disaster Haiti’
- Alicia De La Cour Venning ‘To what extent do Kachin Independence Army perceptions of international humanitarian norms conform with development of its policies and practice?’
- Lina Johansson ‘Land Grabbing in the Name of Development: the Law and ‘illicit’ Land Grabs: the Case of Peru.’
- Amy Corcoran ‘Protesting the Border but on the Border of Protest’
- Natalie Brinham ‘statelessness, state criminality, legal frameworks and the role of victim agency’.
Public Engagement
Related news
- ISCI cited in Truth Out article on Rohingya
16 March 2018 - Dr Thomas MacManus and Professor Penny Green express concerns over ‘premature’ plan to repatriate Rohingya refugees
17 January 2018 - Professor Penny Green comments on Ashin Wirathu and his violence towards the Rohinyga
20 December 2017 - Professor Penny Green and Dr Thomas MacManus co-sign letter calling for Grenfell victims to help with Inquiry
14 December 2017 - Professor Penny Green speaks to CNN about Pope not referring to Rohingya
5 December 2017 - Professor Penny Green discusses why the Pope failed to mention the Rohingya
1 December 2017 - Professor Penny Green writes on Myanmar, genocide and the Rohingya for 21st Century Global Dyanmics
28 November 2017 - Professor Penny Green interviewed for The Briefing podcast about Violence in Myanmar
17 November 2017 - Professor Penny Green comments on Downing Street's response to the Rohingya crisis
14 November 2017 - Professor Penny Green comments on the increasing pressure faced by universities to break ties with institutions in Myanmar
2 November 2017 - Alicia de la Cour Venning, Dr Thomas MacManus and Professor Penny Green write on exposing the genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya
23 October 2017 - Professor Penny Green quoted in ASEAN Today article on Aung San Suu Kyi possibly allowing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar
10 October 2017 - Professor Penny Green appears on TRT World Roundtable: 'Rohingya Crisis - One month on, can it be stopped?'
29 September 2017 - ISCI featured in Teen Vouge article on 'Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, Explained'
28 September 2017 - Professor Penny Green spoke to BBC Radio 4 on 'The Rohingya violence: a textbook example of ethnic cleansing?'
25 September 2017 - Professor Penny Green featured in article on the 'Call to strip Myanmar’s leader Aung San-Suu Kyi of Ulster-degree'
22 September 2017 - Professor Penny Green denounces Spain’s attempts to block the referendum in Catalonia in a co-written letter
22 September 2017 - Professor Penny Green speaks to the BBC’s Spanish language service about the crisis of the Rohingyas in Myanmar
15 September 2017 - Myanmar Violence: Interview with Professor Penny Green
11 September 2017 - International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) featured in 'The Guardian view on Myanmar: some humans have more rights than others'
4 May 2017 - Podcast with Professor Penny Green - 'Crimes of state: When a nation goes from protector to perpetrator'
16 December 2016 - Professor Penny Green featured in Guardian article on reports of murder and rape of Rohingya by soldiers in Myanmar
15 December 2016 - Professor Penny Green quoted in New York Times article on Former U.N. Chief's concern over Rohingya in Myanmar
8 December 2016 - Aung San Suu Kyi is legitimising genocide in Myanmar, warn state crime academics
28 November 2016 - Professor Penny Green discusses treatment of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar on BBC World Service - Newsday
25 November 2016 - 'Shoot first, ask questions later' article cites ISCI's work on Rakhine State
21 November 2016 - Hundreds of armed men attack police in Myanmar; UN calls for restraint
14 October 2016 - Professor Penny Green interviewed about ISCI's research on TRT World
15 April 2016 - Myanmar's government is persecuting Muslims through court convictions
21 December 2015 - ISCI wins Public Engagement Award 'Inform' 2015
20 November 2015 - Myanmar’s Rohingya minority face annihilation says Professor Penny Geen
30 October 2015 - Professor Penny Green cited on controversial Myanmar monk Ashin Wirathu in 'Status'
11 September 2015 - Professor Penny Green 'The most persecuted people on Earth?' in the Economist
12 June 2015 - QMUL People - Professor Penny Green, International State Crime Initiative
9 June 2015 - International State Crime Initiative shortlisted for Times Higher Education Award
4 September 2014