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Introduction of Keynote Speaker Dr. Sandra Wachholz It is my great pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Piers Beirne. He is one of the finest criminologist in the field and I can say this with great confidence because I spent two years examining 18000 pages of text in introductory criminology textbooks for my dissertation and know with great clarity that he has offered up one of the finest introductory criminology textbooks in the discipline of criminology. He is currently the editor of one of the most exciting and new journals in criminology entitled Theoretical Criminology, so when one stands back and looks at his contributions one can only assume that we have before us a very first rate scholar. He is a first rate scholar not only through his productivity but through the questions that he asks. I mark his contribution by the bench mark that Gilbert Guise has set up for us. Gilbert Guise once wrote "intellectual work if it is to be first rate requires fresh and iconoclastic thought otherwise it is out to prey the technicians who vie with each other in attempts to do the same thing only better". By Gilbert Guise's standards we have before us a very first rate scholar. Piers Beirne has stepped back from the technicians and has asked those very, very difficult questions. When many were scrambling in the early 1980s to demonize the Soviet Union, Piers Beirne stood back and asked "what can we learn from Soviet legal theory and in particular, what did Lennon have to say to us about legal philosophy?". Piers Beirne, in an era where we are experiencing enormous cutbacks to our social welfare states, which as many of us would easily argue has a direct correlation to our incarceration rate, Piers Beirne has asked "what do penal systems look like in societies with radically different socio-political orders, with stronger social welfare states?". These are the type of fresh questions that Piers Beirne has asked. He has also asked more recently "how can we relate better to our environment?". We live in a world where everyday when we go to bed we have lost anywhere between 50 to 100 species; in a world where by the turn of the century we will have lost one fourth of our biological diversity, a biological diversity that we are so intrinsically entwined with, so central to our environment. Piers Beirne says to us and asks that fresh new question "how can we relate better to the world around us, and in particular to our flora and fauna". These questions, as Gilbert Guise states, are the qualities of a first rate scholar. I am with great pleasure in a position to introduce our keynote speaker today, Piers Beirne.
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© 2007 Atlantic Human Rights Centre, St. Thomas University |
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