News & Events

The Irish Centre for Human Rights continues its lunchtime seminar series with a seminar on 'Penality in the Underground: The IRA’s Pursuit of Informers' by Dr Ron Dudai, Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben Gurion University. The seminar takes place at 12.30pm, Friday, 31st March 2023, in the Seminar Room, Irish Centre for Human Rights. All are welcome to attend.

Secret informers are often the biggest threat faced by underground rebel groups, which must respond to this challenge in order to survive. Using the IRA as a case-study, Ron Dudai’s book Penality in the Underground offers a systematic, in-depth analysis of this phenomenon, providing an empirical and theoretical account of the causes, forms, functions, and effects of the underground response to informers. While superficial media images tend to depict only ruthless killings, the book argues - using the lens of 'Punishment and Society' and drawing on rich interviews with IRA members and on archival sources - that groups such as the IRA develop complex systems of punishment and social control in their pursuit of informers.

Dr Ron Dudai is a senior lecturer at the department of sociology & anthropology, Ben Gurion University, Israel. His work has been published in leading journals including British Journal of Sociology, British Journal of Criminology, Law & Social Inquiry, and Punishment & Society. He was, among others, a member of the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and visiting scholar at the Mitchell Institute, Queen's University Belfast. He was awarded the Brian Williams Prize by the British Society of Criminology, and served as co-editor of the Journal of Human Rights Practice.