Transitional Justice as Communicative and Deliberative Process: A Multi-Method Exploration at the Intersection of Expressivism, Participation and Outreach

Transitional justice has become the globally dominant paradigm for addressing the legacies of large scale right violations. This project unpacks how transitional justice interventions open up heterogeneous and multidirectional processes of normative and didactic communication, dialogue and deliberation about harm, rights, justice, inclusion and citizenship, and the effects thereof on socio-legal relations, narratives and beliefs. Situated at the theoretical intersection of expressivism, participation and outreach, the research adopts innovative qualitative and quantitative approaches, from computational corpus-based text analysis, to qualitative meta-synthesis, visual narrative analysis and survey-based experimental design. Its findings highlight the expressive opportunities and tensions inherent to transitional justice discourse, how these narratives are negotiated and (re)shaped through the participation of survivors, and the impact thereof on the knowledge and attitudes of broader societal audiences.