In addition to her role as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the College of Law, Professor Colleen Murphy has also been appointed as Interim Associate Chancellor and Vice Provost for Global Affairs & Strategies Designate. She recently spoke with Illinois International about the role, her vision for global engagement at the University, how she hopes to facilitate global research collaborations, and areas of opportunity in the coming year.

What role does technology have in global inequalities and can new technologies be instrumental in making the world less unfair? In the new volume Technology and Equality, co-edited by Professor Colleen Murphy, these issues and others are addressed from a wide range of perspectives by scholars from multiple disciplines. The book is published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers and available now.

Professor Colleen Murphy is part of the organizing committee for the inaugural workshop on Paradigms and Transformations in Transitional Justice and Human Rights. Hosted at the University of Birmingham in May 2025, the conference seeks to bring together leading experts in transitional justice and human rights. The aim of this initial workshop is to explore dominant visions of accountability within transitional justice and human rights, as well as to develop ideas for future collaborations by exploring key aspects of the relationship between transitional justice and human rights—synergies, tensions, and other patterns and divergences. 

Professor Colleen Murphy has been nominated to become a part of the Big Ten Academic Alliance Mellon Fellows for the Humanities/Academic Leadership Program. The BTAA-ALP was created by the Provosts of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the academic consortium of the Big Ten Universities, to develop the leadership potential of participating faculty, with particular emphasis on enriching the diversity of leadership in BTAA institutions. The Mellon Fellows program is funded through a grant to the BTAA from the Andrew Mellon Foundation. Congratulations to the Professor Murphy on behalf of the College of Law.

Professor Colleen Murphy has been invited to join the International Advisory Board of the Italian Journal FQP/PPI Filosofia e questioni Pubbliche/ Philosophy and Public Issues. Founded in 1992 by Sebastiano Maffettone, the journal has been a reference for normative political philosophy in Italy for more than 30 years. The Board has plans to launch a new series of the journal with a new publisher, Giappichelli, with the aim of further enhancing the journal’s national and global profile. As part of the refreshed international advisory board, Murphy and her colleagues aim to contribute to the public discussion of the most pressing contemporary debates about politics, social and political institutions, and morality, with a keen interest in normative theory.

The BRIDGE Alliance, a partnership between the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and University of Birmingham, recently commemorated its 10-year anniversary by announcing an investment to establish strategic research partnerships with the Global South, focusing on global health, sustainability, and education access and equity. In addition, the BRIDGE Seed Fund, some $200,000 of annual funding, continues to kick-start research projects between the two universities. Professor Colleen Murphy and colleagues at Birmingham are the beneficiaries of the BRIDGE Seed Fund, for their proposed collaborative project “Establishing and Inaugurating Transitional Justice and Human Rights Network.” The project involves a workshop focused on the intersection of human rights law and transitional justice as well as a visit in the spring of 2025 to discuss future collaborations. 

Professor Colleen Murphy will deliver the keynote address at the Delft Design for Values Institute event Share Fair: Design for Justice. The event is intended to share knowledge, networks, perspectives, and insights on the subject of Design and Justice. The conference takes place on June 4, 2024 at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Quadrangle, the magazine of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, profiled the Illinois Scholars at Risk program in its Spring 2024 issue. The profile highlights the work done by the program, chaired by Professor Colleen Murphy. The program offers assistance to scholars who face danger at home, and the Illinois group has brought seven scholars to campus from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Guatemala, Lebanon, and Ukraine. “It is incredibly rewarding to see colleges and departments from across campus support colleagues from across the globe facing acute risks and to hear from scholars about the difference the program has made in their lives,” Murphy said.

Professor Colleen Murphy has co-authored an op-ed titled “Israel, Hamas, and the Narratives of Atrocity.” The piece was published on October 25 for the Daily Nous. An excerpt follows: