Helena Kennedy KC is one of the UK’s most distinguished lawyers. She has practiced at the Bar for over 40 years in the field of criminal law and has conducted many of the leading cases in those years, including the Balcombe Street Siege, the Brighton bombing trial, the Guildford Four Appeal, the European Union Sub-committee on Justice issues, Michael Bettany Espionage case, the bombing of the Israeli embassy, the Jihadist fertilizer bomb plot, and the transatlantic bomb plot. She has championed law reform for women, especially relating to sexual and domestic violence and developed the defense of Battered Women’s syndrome in the British courts.
She has chaired the British Council and the UK Human Genetics Commission. She has been a member of the House of Lords for over 20 years, where she chairs The European Union Sub-committee on Justice issues. She is chair of Justice, the British arm of the International Commission of Jurists.
She is the chair of the Booker Prize Foundation. She has stepped down as Principal of Mansfield college, Oxford and become the new Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University. She has just taken over as the new Director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute.