Research
Making reparations for slavery
Two major conferences next month will hear presentations from Fernne
Brennan of the Department of Law and Human Rights Centre in relation to
her work on making reparations for the transatlantic slave trade.
Fernne's on-going research addresses human rights principles that
victims of rights' violations should be afforded access to justice in line
with the guidelines on the right to a remedy and reparations.
She explained: 'There are problems surrounding any claim for
reparations for the African Holocaust because the events happened in the
past, and it is difficult to assess the consequential damage caused to the
descendants of slaves. However, there are issues regarding the development
of ex-colonial economies, which are heavily reliant on international
markets for a few export commodities. This trade legacy provides the link
between the past and current discrimination. I am looking at how a
reparative framework could be built into trading rules.'
Fernne and Sharon Hanson of Canterbury Christchurch University will
chair and provide lead papers to the Socio-Legal Studies Association’s
Law, Race, Religion and Human Rights Panel at the University of
Manchester.
The panel will include papers relating to slavery, reparations,
international trade and race discrimination from a number of experts from
UK and French universities.
Fernne has also had a paper accepted for Hamline University's Spring
Symposium 'The Declaration of Human Rights: A reality check', being held
in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Entitled 'Exploring a Reparations Framework for
Addressing Trade Inequality', her paper argues for reparations to provide
a trump card in changing trading rules.
A part of her reparations project Fernne hosted contributions from
Esther Stanford, Chair of the pan Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe,
and Deborah Gabriel, Director of human rights organisation Imani
Development at a Human Rights Centre seminar last month.
The project continues with an international conference entitled,
'Colonialism, Slavery, Reparations and Trade: Remedying the Past?' in
November, at the Brunei Gallery in London. This is an inter-institutional
venture between the University of Essex, the School of Oriental and
African Studies and the Centre for Commercial Law Studies.
Financial boost to brainwave research
Communication direct from the brain to the computer is the goal of the
latest research by Professor Riccardo Poli and Dr Francisco Sepulveda of
the Department of Computing and Electronic Systems.
The pair has recently been awarded a grant of more than £350,000 to
cover three years of research on Analogue Evolutionary Brain Computer
Interfaces (BCI) where limited movement means that some people are unable
to use computer keyboards in their current form. The result aims to be
flexible and cheap enough to make a real difference to people’s lives.
Through electrodes attached to the head via a simple cap, brainwaves
can directly transmit instructions to a computer, moving the cursor across
the screen to choose different functions. So far they have developed a
prototype Brain Computer Interface mouse capable of full 2-D motion
control.
An additional plus is that the user only requires a few minutes
training before using the mouse. Dr Sepulveda said: 'Everything we do in
the lab is meant to be easy-to-use. By and large most of the work being
done around the world assumes people will be available for months of
training.
'We hope to get a lot more disabled people involved in the project to
find out the problems associated with each individual.'
BCI could also revolutionise computer gaming with gamers also being
able to control their devices without the need for joysticks.
Also in the printed February edition of Wyvern:
- Bookshelf
- Radical movement explored
- Gene breakdown
