Vicky Conway's powerful legacy will live on

As shown by the range of tributes to her after her death recently, Vicky Conway, from Douglas in Cork city, saw all people as equals and argued that law was not abstract, it was about people and relationships

No one can talk about modern policing without engaging with Vicky Conway’s work.

In the early summer of 2015, Vicky Conway turned up at Dublin City University to give a presentation as part of an application for a lectureship in law. Over the course of 20 minutes she astounded the audience with a treatise on how law was about people. 

She trenchantly argued that law was not abstract, it was about people and relationships and the more we remembered that as academics and teachers, the better. She was hired the following day and over the next seven years touched so many lives in DCU and beyond.

Vicky came to DCU with a stellar reputation having previously held positions at the University of Kent, Queen’s University Belfast, the University of Limerick and the University of Leeds. 

From her position in Kent, she was a regular commentator in the Irish broadcast media on issues of policing having written two stunningly incisive books: The Blue Wall of Silence: The Morris Tribunal and Police Accountability in the Republic of Ireland in 2010, and Policing Twentieth Century Ireland: A History of an Garda Síochána in 2013. 

Both have shaped debates about the role of policing in Ireland ever since and no one can talk about modern policing without engaging with Vicky’s work. She emphasised the intersection between social change, police culture, and police accountability. She used her unrivalled knowledge of policing when twice a member of the Policing Authority, and in her membership of the Commission of the Future of Policing in Ireland.

Vicky also wrote brilliantly about the Kerry Babies Case, miscarriages of justice in Ireland, police governance and accountability, the Irish prison system, restorative justice in Northern Ireland, and abortion law in Ireland. 

Most recently she was engaged in critically important research on police custody where she was amongst the strongest of advocates for fairness, accountability, and the highest standards of rights-protection throughout the criminal process. 

Along with her colleague, and lifelong friend, Yvonne Daly she led an EU Commission-funded grant which developed training for criminal defence solicitors to enable them to best defend their client’s interest in police stations. 

Just days before her death she had been awarded a grant by the Policing Authority to explore the experience and perceptions of policing within diverse and minority communities in Ireland.

Vicky Conway was born in the Cork city suburb of Douglas in May 1980. She attended Eglantine primary school and Regina Mundi secondary school before pursuing a law degree in UCC from where she graduated in 2001. 

She was a brilliant student whose glittering career also saw her gain an LLM in 2002. She was auditor of the Law Society and editor in chief of the second edition of the Cork Online Law Review. She was also a legendary organiser of law student parties.

Vicky had a really wide circle of friends and became fast and firm friends with people quite quickly. In 2008, she was awarded a PhD by Queen’s University, Belfast and began an academic career that shone so brightly. But her life was about so much more than the law. 

From her earliest days of studying law, Vicky saw it as a path for social justice.

She loved to read fiction. Fellow Cork woman Louise O’Neill was a firm favourite. She introduced Asking For It to her first-year students on their first day in class and recently finished Idol in one sitting. She was creative and artistic; an ardent knitter and avid painter. 

Music was another lifelong passion. Among her favourites were Josh Ritter, De La Soul, Mary Coughlan, and Denise Chaila who she saw live in February 2022, her first live gig after the Covid lockdowns.

From her earliest days of studying law, Vicky saw it as a path for social justice. In the days after her death tributes ranged from the President of Ireland, the Minister for Justice, and the Garda Commissioner, down to the ordinary person on the street and legions of students. 

Vicky saw all people equally and had the same amount of time for a stranger who emailed her with a criminal justice problem as she had for the President himself, of whom she was an enthusiastic supporter. She was open to people, and they came to her with their problems. She gave a voice to people who would not otherwise be heard. 

One of her last public appearances was as an authoritative voice on the RTÉ television programme Crimes and Confessions, which examined three of the most notorious miscarriages of justice cases from the 1970s and 1980s in Ireland, including the Kerry Babies Case and drew substantive links between them. 

She was a leading member of Lawyers for Choice which advocated for the repeal of the eighth amendment. In recent years, Vicky became an enthusiastic podcaster, hosting the Policed in Ireland podcast which created a space to hear the lived experience of being policed in Ireland. Here she often hosted the voices of the most marginalised. 

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Tributes to her work from groups such as the Irish Traveller Movement, Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Sex Workers Alliance Ireland, the Stardust Campaign, and many others testified to a rare and powerful voice which has been silenced too soon. 

Yet Vicky Conway’s legacy will live on in her writings and her words. She is survived by her mother, Jean, her sister Susan, her brothers, Dermot, Bryan and Craig, and will be missed by a wide circle of friends, colleagues and students.

Vicky Conway, born 6 May 1980, died 19 July 2022.

• Professor Gary Murphy - School of Law and Government, Dublin City University