Thread by @PeopleOfFinland

Ok, taking a break for some rye sandwiches and going to tell you all about my research.

I’m a PhD candidate in the School or Law and Government at Dublin City University. My research looks at speakers and users or regional or minority languages access their right to a fair trial.

So why Finland, you ask. Well I am doing a case study on 4 languages. Irish speakers in Ireland, Irish Sign Language speakers in Ireland, Swedish speaking Finns and Sámi speakers in Finland.

Ireland and Finland have lots of similarities in this field. A complex relationship with their nearest neighbour, a lesser used official language (Irish and Swedish), both have complicated attitudes to the learning of that language in schools, etc.

As part of my research I’m hoping to interview people who are connected to these languages and the legal system. So I want to speak to lawyers who maybe have a lot of Swedish speaking or Sámi clients and experts who have knowledge of the law and language.

I also REALLY want to speak to Swedish speaking or Sámi people who have had an experience with the criminal justice system here. This means anyone who might have had to go to court or speak to the police about something.

You don’t have to have used Swedish or any Sámi language when you interacted with the criminal justice system, I am still interested to talk! Obviously anyone I speak to would remain anonymous.

I’ll put my DMs open on my own page @GaRoDean if you’d like to contact me. People’s real life experiences are often left out when we research the law. Hearing about how people feel and what happened to them is vital to understanding of legal systems work.

I want to see how people’s real life experiences fit into what the law says ought to be happening. You have a human right to a fair trial. My research wants to explore how speaking or using a regional or minority language might impact that human right.