To mark Refugee Week – a UK-wide festival celebrating the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary – we caught up with the School’s Senior Lecture in Law, Sian Lewis.
Sian’s main focus is teaching international human rights related courses. In the wider University, she is concerned with human rights in the workplace.
This year’s theme is ‘compassion’ which Sian demonstrates in both her teaching and her perspectives on issues relating to asylum seekers.
Tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in human rights.
I studied law largely because my parents pressured me into it. For the most part I disliked it until I was able to take optional subjects, including Public International Law and International Human Rights Law. At that point I thought, if I must be a lawyer, I want to specialise in these areas. I think what attracted me to human rights law was the notion that you might be able to make a tangible difference to people’s lives and play a tiny part in making the world a better place. I was lucky to have been taught by the most inspiring lecturer, Dr Colin Warbrick. I think he was the first academic in the country to introduce International Human Rights Law into the undergraduate curriculum. It was at a time when there wasn’t a single textbook on the subject; it was a long time ago!
Talk about the shift from working as a crown prosecutor to your move into teaching.
Working as a crown prosecutor was something I grinned and bore at the time. Before deciding to take the job, I remember talking to my mentor, a lawyer who worked at the human rights organisation Justice. I desperately wanted to do something that involved my passion for human rights. He told me very clearly that prosecuting involved human rights just as much as defending and that I should not hesitate to take the job. He was absolutely right – there are some hair-raising stories I can tell from that era! However, much as working as a prosecutor was worthwhile, I really wanted to work for a human rights organisation. So I left as soon as I could to get a job as a legal officer with Interights, a now defunct international NGO that was based in London. This job enabled me to move into freelance work sometime later, working for other NGOs, international organisations, inter-governmental organisations and indeed governmental bodies. All of this work focussed on the implementation of international human rights standards – much of it involved training of judges and prosecutors. It was then a natural move to teaching in a university.
What subjects do you teach at the Law School and what do you learn from the students?
At present I teach Human Rights and English Law, International Law and Global Problems, and Critical International Migration Law. I learn so much from my students. In particular, I learn a lot about the world from them – our students are from very diverse backgrounds, and they bring their experience of the world into classroom discussions. For example, I remember a time when we were discussing the idea of concentration camps, and in my mind’s eye I was picturing Nazi camps from WWII. One of my students startled me by saying – oh, I know all about those; I was tortured in one of them in my home country. I was stunned by his openness and willingness to share this with the class.
I am also constantly amazed at how many balls students must juggle these days – what seems like hundreds of written assignments, part time jobs, running student societies and sometimes caring responsibilities. I just do not know how they manage it all! Perhaps they can teach me some time management!
How do you bring compassion into your teaching and research?
That is a good question. Most of my teaching and scholarship is firmly rooted in human rights practice and activism, where the dignity of the human person is central. I am not sure compassion is necessarily the right word in the context of teaching. Perhaps it would be more accurate to speak of passion for the subject, as well as tolerance, respect and understanding. I try to share my passion for the subject by drawing on real life examples with which students can relate. I try to encourage students to think critically about any given topic and at the same time to be aware that others may think differently from them. I try to instil in them the idea that it is of course OK to disagree with others, even very forcefully, so long as they do not engage in ad hominem attacks. My ambition for all students whom I teach is that on completion of their studies, they will go out and change the world for the better.
Find out more about how the University is celebrating Refugee Week.