Biography: Helena Kennedy

[Helena Kennedy]

Helena Kennedy's practice of law as a barrister – she is a member of the Doughty Street Chambers in London – has involved a large number of prominent cases. These include the Brighton Bombing, the Michael Bettany espionage trial, the Guildford Four appeal and the bombing of the Israeli embassy. She has also acted for many battered women who have killed their husbands.

She was the British member of the recent International Bar Association Task Force on Terrorism. She is currently chairing an inquiry for the Royal College of Pathologists and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health into sudden infant death, in the aftermath of miscarriages of justice where mothers were wrongly convicted of murdering their babies.

In 1993, Kennedy became the first chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, a post from which she stepped down in 2001. She is now president of the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University.