Samantha Holmes

Profile

Biography

Samantha Holmes

Research Associate and Generating Respect Hub coordinator

Samantha joined York Law School and the Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR) in 2023 as a Research Associate. She is also the Coordinator of the Generating Respect Hub, an academic-practitioner network seeking to enhance norm compliance in armed conflict through innovative socio-legal research.

Samantha is a member of the Beyond Compliance Consortium’s research program “Building Evidence on Promoting Restraint by Armed Actors”. Her ongoing research explores the impacts of war on mental wellbeing and the extent to which international human rights and humanitarian law can protect mental health in armed conflict. She has previously worked for a variety of human rights organisations, including Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, ARTICLE 19, and the Cambodian Center for Human Rights. Samantha holds an LLM with distinction in International Human Rights Law and Practice from the University of York and an LLB from Queen Mary University of London. 

Awards and prizes

Samantha was awarded the CAHR Scholarship for 2022/23 and in 2023 was a recipient of the Sam Pegram Human Rights Placement Award for commitment to reflexive human rights practice. In 2024, she received prizes for producing the highest graded LLM dissertation across York Law School, as well as graduating with the highest LLM average grade.

Research

Overview

My socio-legal research interests include:

• Mental health impacts of armed conflict, including the concept of civilian (mental) harm, and international legal protections against such harm.
• The vulnerabilities of children in armed conflict and legal as well as extra-legal mechanisms for the better protection of children, including the UN Children and Armed Conflict Agenda.
• Decolonial research methodology, including challenging ethnocentric concepts and Western knowledge and employing cultural relativism.
• Lawfare, specifically the weaponisation of the law against human rights defenders through Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs).
• The right to the highest attainable standard of mental health.
• Human rights in Southeast Asia, including in particular, Cambodia and Myanmar.

Publications

Selected publications

• AGIL - War is not skin deep – International Humanitarian Law and mental health -
• Articles of War - Strategies to Reduce Harm and Need in War Through a Decolonial and Intersectional Lens
• AGIL - Between Aftershocks & Airstrikes in Myanmar – Accounts of Compounding Harm + Need
• The Conversation - The UN has a ‘list of shame’ for those who harm children in war – but who is missing?
• “A Credible List”: Recommendations for the Secretary-General’s 2024 Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict
• OpinioJuris - Influencing Armed Actors to Increase the Protection of Children in Armed Conflict
• The Blue Badge Test in York: Can the realisation of disabled people’s rights and the prevention of terrorism be reconciled? 
• The Diplomat - How Lese Majeste Laws Are Eroding Free Speech in Southeast Asia
• The Southeast Asia Globe - Weaponising the law against free expression
• Fifth Annual Report of the Cambodia Fundamental Freedoms Monitor