BIO
LAWYER
Ife Thompson is a distinguished Movement Lawyer and UN Fellow, specialising in criminal defence, family law, and human rights. Her work often intersects with cases involving racial injustice and lingustic injustice, and she employs innovative legal strategies, drawing from UN International Human Rights Law, community-based issues to actively challenge these matters within her criminal defence practice.
As a UN Fellow for the International Decade for people of African descent, Ife passionately advocates for the human rights of Black individuals in the UK. In the courtroom, she disrupts the biased narratives that prosecutors attach to Black language terms, frequently calling for Black language experts to challenge these stereotypes. She firmly believes that racial justice is intricately connected to language justice and that Black liberation includes normalising communication and perspectives.
Ife has accumulated a diverse portfolio of Criminal Defense work, appearing in Crown, Magistrates, and Youth Courts. Her extensive experience includes handling first appearances, PTPH's, sentences, trials, bail applications, legal arguments and successful applications in the Family Courts.
In Youth Court, Ife has effectively raised issues of racial trauma, while in Crown Court, her persuasive advocacy and negotiation skills have led to many cases being dropped by the Crown due to flaws she highlighted through oral and written submissions. She has also successfully defended clients facing charges and excluded evidence under s.78 at trial.
In another case, Ife secured a lenient custodial sentence for a young adult client with previous drug convictions, emphasising racial discrimination's impact personally and systematically on her client's life and arguing successfully for the court to see this as mitigation.
Throughout her career, Ife has consistently demonstrated her dedication to justice, successfully challenging the Crown's evidence, and raising crucial issues like racial discrimination and language injustice, ultimately leading to favourable outcomes for her clients.
Ife Thompson is a globally renowned Movement Lawyer and sought-after speaker, recognised for her expertise in the intersection of law, language justice, digital freedom, and human rights. Her international acclaim recently led to an invitation from the Digital Freedom Fund to speak at a prestigious event in Berlin. Here's a glimpse of her insightful seession:
At the heart of Ife's talk was the exploration of building effective movements against digital policing, delving into critical questions that shape our understanding of this complex issue. You can watch the livestream of her session : (https://digitalfreedomfund.org/another-tech-is-possible/), where she passionately advocates for a more just and liberated digital future.
Ife is a frequent television and radio commentator who offers incisive insights on the criminal legal system, courtroom injustices and anti-Blackness.
She was also a 2023 Legal Aid Lawyer on the Year finalist in the category of 'Legal Aid New Comer'.
CONTENT CREATOR
Ife is deeply committed to using digital platforms to amplify conversations around Black and Creole languages' linguistic identity/ history. As a Black languages content creator, she explores the intersections of race, language, and power on TikTok [@ifedior].
🎙️ Podcast: The Black British English Podcast
Created and hosted by Ife, this podcast delves into the richness of Black British speech, culture, and language justice.Listen here: Spotify | Apple Podcasts
AI AGENT ON IFE'S RESEARCH
Ife's work prioritises accessibility, ensuring that conversations about language and identity are open, inclusive, and easy to engage with. To support this, Ife has compiled her research on Black British English into a user-friendly AI agent you can interact with:
👉 Talk to the AI here
COMMUNITY ACTIVIST
Ife Thompson is also an award-nominated UK-based Community Activist, Black History Expert, Curator and Writer. She was also recently crowned Miss Ebony UK Culture and Tourism 2023. She campaigns for the rights of people of African Descent in the UK, as she believes we should live in a world where Black people can live free from Racism and Oppression.
She has founded BLAM UK in 2017, an award-winning Non-profit that provides educational, advocacy and well-being support for Black people living in Britain.
Ife was recently selected by the United Nations Office of Human Rights Commission, as the United Nations Fellow for the Decade for People of African Descent. Ife aims to ensure the activities of the Decade are properly recognised and furthered in the United Kingdom. She wants to ensure that the human rights of Black people locally and globally are better protected.
In October 2020 Ife was nominated for CJA Awards Outstanding Individual of the year for her work in making the Criminal Justice System a fairer place.
BLACK HISTORY EXPERT
Ife is also a Black history expert. She has used this expert knowledge to curate visual and audio projects focusing on African cultural retention in Afro-descendant communities. Ife recently curated a project for The London Metropolitan Archives called 'Black Organising in the UK- Caribbean homes as a site of Black Joy and Resistance', she did this through looking at the life work of Jessica and Eric Huntley. She has also been the external Black history moderator for schools in the Lambeth Borough. She was the editor of BLAM UK Primary Teacher Resource Pack on Black history and contributed to many key chapters in the book alongside the BLAM UK Team.