Criminalising Violent Pasts: Multiple Roots and Forgotten Pathways 1950s-2010s
London South Bank University, 15-16 November 2018
This conference seeks to explore the history of the (often forgotten) pathways and contested visions through which violent pasts have been criminalized in modern societies. Taking as its starting point the moment of an acceleration of decolonisation, globalisation and de-Stalinisation in the 1950s, the contributions explore the variety of actors, activisms and political projects that lay behind the global expansion of such ideas. The conference integrates stories of dealing with the past into broader frameworks supplied, for example, by histories of globalization, neoliberalism or postcolonialism.
Thursday 15 November Keyworth Centre, K806
Opening remarks: 9.00 – 9.15
Panel 1: 9.15 – 11.15: Criminalising Colonial Rule
▪ Berthold Molden (University of Vienna) – “The Southern Struggle for Global justice. Anti-colonial Politics of History Before the Neoliberal Turn”
▪ Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo (University of Coimbra) and José Pedro Monteiro (University of Coimbra), “Empires under Probation: International Organisations and Portuguese Colonialism (c.1955-1975)”
▪ Alanna O’Malley (Leiden University), “Where was the UN? The Contestation of Rights in Post-Colonial Africa, from the Individual to the International” Discussant: Reuben Loffman (Queen Mary University of London)
Coffee Break: 11.15 - 11.30
Panel 2: 11.30 – 13.00: Communist states and the criminalisation of wars and racism
▪ Mate Zombory (Hungarian Academy of Science), “The Cold War Divide and the Second Wave of Criminalization: Hungarian Contribution to War Crimes Trials in the Long 1960s”
▪ Sebastian Gehrig (University of Roehampton), “The Socialist Bloc and the Criminalisation of Apartheid through International Law” Discussant: James Mark (Exeter University)
Lunch: 13.00-14.00
Panel 3: 14.00 – 16.00: Transitional Justice/Criminalization Discourses from the Global South
▪ Cath Collins (Ulster University), “Latin American Contributions to Human Rights and Post-Dictatorial Justice Discourses”
▪ Phil Clark (SOAS, University of London), “The Local Turn: Community-Based Criminalisation in Central Africa as a Response to the Nuremberg Paradigm”.
▪ Raluca Grosescu (University of Exeter), “Revising the 1948 UN Genocide Convention by National Courts. Insights from Argentina, Guatemala and Lithuania” Discussant: Francesca Lessa (Oxford University)
Coffee Break: 16.00 - 16.15
Panel 4: 16.15 – 18.00: Histories of Decriminalisation
▪ James Mark (University of Exeter), Sophie Baby (University of Dijon) and Daniel Kressel (Columba University), “The Spanish Model and its Circulation in Latin America and Central Eastern Europe”
▪ Federica Rossi (London South Bank University), “The failed amnesty of the ‘years of lead’ in Italy” Discussant: Rebekka Friedman (King’s College London)
Friday 16 November Keyworth Centre, K806
Panel 5: 9.00 – 11.00: Transitional Justice and Neoliberalism
▪ Nina Schneider (Koeln University) - "Lost justice claims? About the lost Global South Project, Neoliberalism, and the Rise of a New Field of Knowledge (Transitional Justice)”
▪ Josh Bowsher (Brunel University) – “TJ as a neoliberal paradigm. Insight from Sierra Leone”
▪ Joseph Slaughter (Columbia University) – “Neoliberalizing National Liberation: Terrorism, Human Rights, and the Individual”
Discussant: Daniela Lai (London South Bank University)
Coffee Break: 11.00 - 11.15
Panel 6: 11.15 – 12.30: Criminalisation of Communist Crimes since the 1990s
▪ Laure Neumayer, (University of Paris 1) Anemona Constantin (University of Bucharest), Mate Zombory (Hungarian Academy of Science), Muriel Blaive (IWM, Vienna), and Valentin Behr (University of Warsaw) – “The Black Book of Communism and the criminalization of Communism after the Cold War: a pan-European perspective”
▪ Marie Laure Geoffray (University La Sorbonne Nouvelle) - “Criminalizing the Cuban revolution: crossed inspiration from Central Europe and Latin America”
Discussant: Georges Mink (CNRS, France)
Conclusions/Roundtable: 12.30 – 13.15
London South Bank University
Keyworth Centre
Keyworth Street
London SE1 6NG
