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This chapter contributes to a corpus of legal–anthropological studies concerning the role of cultural experts in legal institutions. It begins by identifying the reasons behind the fragile collaboration between Italian courts and cultural experts and outlining some of the consequences of this relationship. It then presents a collection of cases involving cultural experts including a focus on the L’Aquila trial recounted from first-hand experience by Antonello Ciccozzi, the anthropologist who acted as expert consultant. The conclusions attempt to summarize the “state of the art” of cultural expertise in Italian courts today and call for greater collaboration between law and anthropology as a means of guaranteeing a fair trial.

Cultural expertise can play a relevant role in countries where cultural diversity marks social life, as in the case of Portugal, a country where migration always characterized its past and continues to influence the present, and where the presence of ethnic and religious minorities must be noticed. In this chapter, we aim to survey the use of cultural mediation in Portuguese law, as well as case law and culture centered mediation out of courts, in order to understand whether the concept of cultural expertise, in a broad sense, might be useful. Although it is a “contested concept,” culture is understood, for the purposes of this chapter, in a dynamic and non-essentialist sense, as a valuable asset providing context and significance to people’s lives. Assuming that the State is not “culturally neutral” and that its institutions somehow reflect the established culture, issues of equality and demands for cultural recognition will necessarily arise. However, it is the duty of the State to respect and protect cultural identity. Even though cultural expertise may become relevant in several domains of the State, particular attention is given in this chapter to the role played by cultural arguments and cultural expertise in courts in Portugal. Cultural expertise is also very relevant for social intervention, and it is mobilized in the processes of cultural mediation. These processes have a low level of institutionalization in Portugal, since it is not routinely recognized in the implementation of public policies as an autonomous professional profile.

This chapter discusses adjudication, expertise, and cultural difference as it appears in criminal court cases concerning female genital cutting (FGM) in the EU, as reported in a 2015 comparative overview. It begins with the distinction between typical and atypical FGM cases; a distinction that connects court cases to the cultural realities of the practicing communities, suggesting that the lack of cultural knowledge can cause unnecessary suffering to families and/or individuals who wrongly undergo prosecution in alleged FGM cases. A contrario, the intervention of experts in FGM court cases could be a positive approach to assessing the legitimacy of public intervention in certain cases.

In this chapter, I examine the informal cultural expertise utilized in the District Courts and Courts of Appeal of two Finnish cities. I argue that the parties that serve as providers of “cultural expertise” are manifold and include eyewitnesses, interpreters, and even the courts themselves. I examine the challenges regarding the informal use of cultural expertise, drawing from debates that consider the relationship between an “insider-expert” and a “trained-expert” in acting as a cultural mediator.

In this chapter, we present a critical engagement with the methodology that each research team presenting a case study in this book from England, Arab Israel, Northern Ireland, Trinidad and Tobago and the United States adopted.

Education is a cultural project that consists of history, narrative and faith. The Black, Asian Minority Ethnicity (BAME) and senior leaders representing marginalised groups that we talked to in this research all stated that their faith, and religion was central to their service as an educational leader. The faiths represented in our research are Islam, Christianity, Sikhism and no faith where a humanitarian approach is taken. The chapter presents the scientific significance of what values underpin these leaders’ behaviours, and to understand how their values align with legislation, education policy and the values found in Education Governance Systems.

A constructivist comparative analysis approach was adopted to address four research questions. First, how do the senior-level leaders describe and understand how school governance systems and school commissioners empower them to develop school communities as societal innovators for equity and renewal for peace in our time? Second, how do they describe and understand the role mentors, and/or advocates play to support their navigation through the governance systems? Third, to what extent do they believe a cultural change is required to empower them in school communities to Empower Young Societal Innovators for Equity and Renewal for peace in our time? Finally, how can the findings be theorised to generate a theory of knowledge to action through impact strategies within an international comparative analysis framework?

Each of the five international cases collected the narrative biographies of up to 15 superintendents, or chief executive officers of multi-academy trusts of colour. In the Northern Ireland case, eight religiously divided key agents of change were selected as an equivalence for the governance structures in the other five case studies. The total number of senior-level leaders participating in the five case studies was 40.

Each author read their findings through Gross’ (2014) Turbulence Theory and typology to categorise the level and the impact of the challenges the key agents of change need to navigate as they mediate between the governance systems. Gross (2014, p. 248) theory of turbulence is used as a metaphor and states that ‘turbulence can be described as “light” with little or no movement of the craft. “Moderate” with very noticeable waves. “Severe” with strong gusts that threaten control of the aircraft. “Extreme” with forces so great that control is lost and structure damage to the craft occurs’. The chapter identifies the findings were read through the theory of turbulence to reveal the state of the Education Governance Systems and their impact on empowering cosmopolitan citizens to participate fully and freely in societal interactions and cooperation between diverse groups. The authors’ chapters are subject to a comparative analysis that took place at the European Conference for Educational Research Annual Conference in two large seminars (Taysum et al., 2017) in Denmark, further developed by the editors and committed to peer-review.

Purpose – The overall purpose of this chapter is to discuss what is known about serious forms of bias violence, obstacles to studying bias violence, and how alternative theoretical and methodological approaches can advance our understanding of bias violence in the twenty-first century.

Design/methodology/approach – Following a review of the literature, the applicability of identity fusion theory for explaining bias violence is considered and applied to the anti-racial mass shooting at an historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Data come from an innovative open-source project known as the United States Extremist Crime Database.

Findings – Drawing from identity fusion theory, information from open-source data on the Charleston church shooting suggests that the perpetrator was a highly fused individual who perceived African Americans as a threat toward his social identity group and committed an act of extreme behavior (i.e., bias homicide) as a means for stabilizing his self-views.

Originality/value – This chapter builds upon prior studies of bias violence by demonstrating how (1) publicly available open sources (e.g., court documents and media reports) may be systematically compiled and used as reliable data for studying serious forms of bias violence, and (2) the use of social psychological theories, specifically identity fusion theory, can help to explain the role of personal and group identities in discriminatory violence.

Disabled women are reported to be between twice and five times more likely to experience sexual violence than non-disabled women or disabled men; when these are hate crimes they compound harms for both victims and communities.

This user-led research explores how disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors most effectively resist the harm and injustice they experience after experiencing disablist hate crime involving rape.

Feminist standpoint methods are employed with reciprocity as central. This small-scale peer research was undertaken with University ethics and supervision over a five year period. Subjects (n=522) consisted of disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors in North of England.

The intersectional nature of violence against disabled women unsettles constructed macro binaries of public/private space violence and the location of disabled women as inherently vulnerable. Findings demonstrate how seizing collective identity can usefully resist re-victimization, tackle the harms after disablist hate crime involving rape and resist the homogenization of both women and disabled people.

The chapter outlines inequalities in disabled people’s human rights and recommends service and policy improvements, as well as informing methods for conducting ethical research.

This is perhaps the first user-led, social model based feminist standpoint research to explore the collective resistance to harm after experiencing disablist hate crime involving rape. It crossed impairment boundaries and included community living, segregated institutions and women who rely on perpetrators for personal assistance. It offers new evidence of how disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors can collectively unsettle the harms of disablist hate crime and rape and achieve justice and safety on a micro level.