Colleen Murphy
· Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Roger & Stephany Joslin Professor of LawVerifiedUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · Arms Control & Domestic and International Security
Active 1986–2026
About
Colleen Murphy is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and holds the title of Roger & Stephany Joslin Professor of Law at the College of Law. She is also a Professor of Philosophy and of Political Science. Murphy serves as the Chair of the Illinois Scholars at Risk Committee and is affiliated with the Illinois Global Institute and The Program in Arms Control & Domestic and International Security. Her work focuses on issues related to arms control, domestic and international security, and global security studies, contributing to academic and policy discussions in these areas.
Research topics
- Computer Security
- Computer Science
- Political Science
- Mathematics
- Risk analysis (engineering)
- Economics
- Business
- Sociology
- Engineering
- Psychology
- Statistics
- Environmental resource management
- Environmental science
- Positive economics
- Social psychology
- Law
- Law and economics
- Ecology
- Economic system
- Forensic engineering
- Geography
- Operations management
Selected publications
Mapping Critiques of the Treatment of Race and Racism in Transitional Justice
2026-01-20
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract Race and racism are not a central focus in the literature on or practice of transitional justice. Searing critiques of transitional justice take as their starting point this omission, articulating the resulting distortions and blind spots in our understanding of the wrongdoing to which transitional justice should be responsive, the contexts where transitional justice is needed, and the aims of transitional justice processes. This chapter develops a preliminary map of such critiques and considers possible responses and revisions. I argue that there are corrective prescriptions that should be adopted in the scholarship and practice to critiques challenging the conception of wrongdoing transitional justice addresses and the contexts where transitional justice applies. At the same time, critiques about the aims and goals of transitional justice raise fundamental, unanswered questions about what should count as ‘success’ in transitional justice.
Transitional Justice, Memorialisation, and Artificial Intelligence
2026-03-04
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingThis chapter unpacks how artificial intelligence (AI) is re-shaping the practice of transitional justice. The focal point are efforts undertaken by Holocaust museums to harness AI technology so as to re-create interactive visitor experiences through holograms of victims. This chapter notes that AI holograms offer the potential for maintaining an engagement with victims that carries through to future generations. While lauding the possibilities and potentialities AI offers for transitional justice, this chapter also identifies three risks. First, AI exacerbates the tensions involved in balancing a victim-centred approach to transitional justice with the broader societal objectives inherent in the pursuit of transitional justice. Second, AI may undermine efforts to counter denial about atrocities and may reposition and reconstitute victims. Third, AI further marginalises the already marginalised in the context of the global digital divide.
Transitional Justice in an Age of Resurgent Authoritarianism
International Journal of Transitional Justice · 2025-11-01
articleOpen accessSenior authorJournal of Minimally Invasive Gynecology · 2025-01-25
articleReflexive Engagement with Transitional Justice
International Journal of Transitional Justice · 2024-11-01 · 1 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingSSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01
articleOpen accessSenior authorPolitics Philosophy & Economics · 2024-11-04 · 1 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingIn The Idea of Prison Abolition , philosopher Tommie Shelby critically analyzes the case for prison abolition advanced by scholar-activists such as Angela Davis. Abolition is understood as the dismantling and permanent abandonment of incarceration as a method of responding to a social problem like crime. In Shelby's view, abolitionists do not successfully show that prisons must be abolished. Prisons for him retain a necessary and morally defensible function: preventing serious crime. In my commentary, I first suggest that Shelby implicitly evaluates some of Davis's arguments on the terms of success of a scholar, not those of a scholar-activist, and does not consider an objection to his conclusions that scholar-activists are likely to raise. Second, I problematize the basis for Shelby's claim that punishment remains necessary to prevent the most serious crimes.
Political contempt, divided societies, and transitional justice
2024-11-20
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingJudith Shklar presumes an individualized experience of injustice. However, group-based identities in deeply divided polities mediate the sense of injustice. There, the narratives that define group identities include entrenched, collective fears about survival given the threat posed by members of the opposing group given memories of victimization. In deeply divided communities, both groups see themselves as victims, and group identities are shaped by incommensurable narrative understandings of who has been victimized in the past, who is a victim in the present, and who is vulnerable to victimization in the future. Such divisions make responding to injustice through transitional justice processes such as reparations and truth commissions deeply fraught.
Law, Public Policy, and Equality
2024-01-01
other1st authorCorrespondingMedical Research Archives · 2024-01-01
reviewOpen accessThe authors’ review scholarly works in leadership studies and other fields and apply concepts and literature related to Heiman and Timms’ seminal work, New Power (2018), in order to understand the evolving area (as described by Heimans and Timms) of “new power communities.” New power communities can be found in medical and health professions organizations today. Moreover, the importance of social media, crowdsourcing, and the impact of broad-based mass movements in democratic polities, along with the use of new technologies, has caused a reorientation of human networking and interaction. The article discusses the following literature: Naím’s The End of Power (2013), Jefferson, et al.’s “New Power through the Lenses of Leadership Studies, Psychology, and Politics” (2016), Shultz’s Learning from Experience (2016), and Slaughter’s The Chessboard & the Web (2017). Each of these works can inform our analysis of “new power,” community, leadership, and other concepts that helps us analyze and contextualize Heimans and Timms’ New Power in ways that allow us to not only understand the concept of “new power” better, but also understand how leadership, community, and power impact medicine and the health professions. Methodologically, this review study employs a qualitative systematic review approach (see Anh and Kang, 2018). In attempting to understand better the concepts of “new power” and “new power communities,” the authors provide an empirical analysis of new power communities in digital spaces emerging in various contexts including medicine and health professions.
Recent grants
Development of a Taxonomy of Acceptable and Tolerable Risk
NSF · $305k · 2009–2012
Development of a Taxonomy of Acceptable and Tolerable Risk
NSF · $223k · 2012–2013
Frequent coauthors
- 54 shared
Paolo Gardoni
- 8 shared
Kevin Leon
Georgia Southern University
- 7 shared
Lesley Wexler
Chicago Kent College of Law
- 5 shared
Yi Wang
North China Electric Power University
- 5 shared
Jennifer K. Robbennolt
- 5 shared
Rosalia Murphy
- 5 shared
Gillian McComeskey
- 5 shared
Christopher Ryan
American Bar Foundation
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