Rachel Seoighe

Dr Rachel Seoighe

Small Group Project 2023-24

Transformative Justice for Women: Consolidating Expertise towards a Women’s Building model

HMP Holloway, London, the largest women’s prison in Western Europe, closed in 2016. As a result, much of the advocacy, support and therapeutic services provided to women were lost or significantly reduced. Many women relied on the prison to access services, and limited provision exists in prisons outside London. Women in Prison (2017) found that the lack of support, care and safety provided for women in the community leads many women to choose to offend in order to access services. Since its closure, campaigners have called for a Women’s Building to be established as a legacy of the prison: an iconic and flagship support institution for women, founded in decarceral, trauma-informed, caring and collaborative approaches.

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Areas of interest

State Violence Resistance Memory Abolition Decolonisation Feminism Civil Wars Sri Lanka Prisons Carcerality Incarceration Activism Human Rights Conflict Race Postcolonialism Decolonial Theory Social Justice

Cohort

FG9

Biography

Dr Rachel Seoighe’s work is concerned with state violence, resistance, memory and abolition. Working from a decolonial, feminist perspective, her research has primarily focused on the legacies of civil war in Sri Lanka and the closure of London’s Holloway Prison.

Rachel’s research is informed by and actively contributes to activism and civil society resistance. She works closely with Tamil human rights organisations and her research on Sri Lankan state denial, atrocity and conflict memory contributes to accountability efforts and the struggle for justice. Her recent work focuses on Tamil diaspora memory practices and the role of British mercenaries in the Sri Lankan war.

Rachel's collaboration with Dr Carly Guest - as academics and members of Reclaim Holloway - explores the memory and meaning of Holloway as a lived space, contributing to the field of carceral geographies, which explores the spatialities of punishment and the emotional impact of confinement. Their work adopts abolition feminist frames and explores the potential of creative methods in generating 'abolitionist affect' in response to the materialities and lived experience of imprisonment.

Rachel also writes, teaches and thinks about border criminologies, ‘race’ and racialisation, postcolonial and decolonial thought, and social and transformative justice.

Biographical details correct as of 18.04.26