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Dr Hedi Viterbo

Hedi

Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Law

Email: hedi.viterbo@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 6831
Room Number: Mile End

Profile

Dr Hedi Viterbo is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Law at Queen Mary University of London, as well as the founding director of the Childhood, Law & Policy Network (CLPN). His research examines legal issues concerning childhood, state violence, and sexuality from an interdisciplinary and global perspective.

Previously, Dr Viterbo was Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Law at the University of Essex, a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at SOAS (University of London), a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School, and a visiting researcher at Columbia University. He received his PhD in Law from LSE, his LLM (summa cum laude) from Tel Aviv University, and is also a graduate of the latter’s 4-year Interdisciplinary Programme for Outstanding Students.

Research

Publications

Books

Journal articles

Chapters in edited collections

Blogs

Supervision

Dr Viterbo welcomes proposals for postgraduate supervision in the areas of human rights, child law, armed conflict, sexuality, critical legal theory, and socio-legal studies.

Public Engagement

Opinion pieces and media appearances

Educational videos

This introductory video provides an overview of the next four videos.

This video examines to what extent differences between children and adults are natural and universal. Is it possible that childhood is largely a social and legal invention?

Accompanying reading materials: Reading materials - Video 2 [PDF 223KB]

This video discusses the principle of child protection. As shown in the video, this principle has often worked to the detriment of children and adults alike, especially those from disempowered communities.

Accompanying reading materials: Reading materials - Video 3 [PDF 229KB]

This video explores a legal principle known as 'the child's right to be heard.' As the video explains, what this right actually does is enable adults to ignore, misrepresent, and operate against the views of young people.

Accompanying reading materials: Reading materials - Video 4 [PDF 230KB]

This video focuses on child work - a topic that illustrates all the issues discussed in the previous videos. Child protection laws, it is argued, have often harmed working children and ignored their wishes.

Accompanying reading materials: Reading materials - Video 5 [PDF 234KB]Reading materials - Video 5 [PDF 234KB]

Talks and conference papers

  • 'Critical Legal Theory and Childhood Studies': Children in Theory series, University of Liverpool (2024):
  • 'A Conversion with Will Holub-Moorman on Critical Legal Theory and Childhood Studies': Children in Theory series, University of Liverpool (2024):
  • 'Just for Kids? How the Youth Decarceration Discourse Legitimises Adult Incarceration': The Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling and Strathclyde (2022).
  • Panel discussion: 'Childist Approaches to Law' - Childism Institute, Rutgers University (2022).
  • 'Just for Kids? How the Youth Decarceration Discourse Legitimises Adult Incarceration': University of Cambridge, Institute of Criminology (2021).
  • Panel discussion: 'Putting "Children First"? Tentative Explorations of Alternative Imaginaries' (June 2021, co-sponsored by Queen Mary's Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Centre for Childhood Cultures)
  • 'Child Rights in the Service of State Violence: Lessons from Israel/Palestine': University of Manchester – Institute of Education; University College Dublin – Centre for Human Rights ('Critical Exploration of Human Rights' conference); Annual Conference of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (all in 2021)
  • 'Putting "Children First"?: Tentative Explorations of Alternative Imaginaries' – panellist: 'Rethinking Childhood Studies Today' seminar series, Queen Mary University of London (2021)
  • ‘Disempowering Children by “Rectifying Childhood’s Boundaries”’: Contemporary Childhood Conference, University of Strathclyde (2018).
  • ‘Stolen Childhood’: King’s College London (2018).
  • ‘Analogy, Resistance, and Generational Segregation’: Columbia University – Center for the Study of Law and Culture; York University – Osgoode Hall Law School; Queen’s University – Faculty of Law (2016).
  • ‘Adult-Child separation: Transnational Links, Parallels, and Continuities’. University of Melbourne – Legal Theory Workshop; University of Sydney – Law & Society Research Network; University of New South Wales – Indigenous Law Centre; Monash Faculty of Law – Staff Seminar; Swinburne Institute for Social Research Seminar Series (all in 2015); SOAS Centre for Gender Studies Seminar Series (2014).
  • ‘Witnessing the Representational Economy of Torture’. Law & Society Northeast Conference, Amherst, US. The paper was selected to be the focus of a session, with three designated discussants (2013).
  • ‘The Occupation of Children’s Rights’. Harvard Law School – Visiting Scholars Colloquium; Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights; Columbia University – Center for Palestine Studies (2012).
  • ‘The Age of Conflict: Socio-Legal Constructions of Childhood and Time in the Occupied Palestinian Territories’. 15th interdisciplinary colloquium of the UCL Law Faculty (2010).

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