Events organised or supported by the Network.
Research Futures on Justice and Violence, 11th September 2024
This event featured a talk from speaker David Grimstead, CEO of LOCATE international and explored opportunities for Network members to get involved. LOCATE is a UK-registered charity committed to finding missing persons and identifying the unidentified, providing answers for families in unsolved/ cold cases.
The day included presentations from Network members on their research in progress on topics as varied as: female martyrs in Roman Africa, police scrutiny groups, social harm and political accountability, Forensic Citizenship and the new Centre for Interdisciplinary Holocaust and Genocide Studies. The resources shared are available here Research Futures slides. For more opportunities to hear about network members current research, or present your own please keep an eye on our Events page for our regular Research in Progress Seminars.
Report on the State Violence, Justice and Accountability workshop, 2nd April 2024
This interdisciplinary workshop featured 12 speakers from Exeter and other British universities (including Liverpool, Warwick, City, Bath, Cardiff, Leister, City, West England). It consisted of four panels policing, military operations, genocide, authoritarianism, legal remedies and community accountability. The format allowed a lot of space for conversations that were empirically rich and conceptually sophisticated. There was enthusiasm to run future workshops to develop ideas further and consider possible funding opportunities for further research. The main goal was to forge new interdisciplinary research connections and advertise the network and this was achieved.
Report on Reborn Eyes Event, 16th March 2024
The screening of the film Reborn eyes: story of a movement in resistance contributed to the Justice and Violence Network’s aims of disseminating research outputs beyond specialist audiences and fostering accessible conversations about violence, justice, and accountability. The event included a discussion with our invited speaker Neil Corney, researcher at the Omega Foundation, who provided a broad context of the history and the current state of affairs regarding the use and regulation of less-lethal weapons worldwide. By giving an overview of the activities, campaigns, report findings, and even artefacts from Omega’s research into policing tools and practices, Neil’s remarks helped contextualise the film and Lucía’s research, as well as generating important connecting threads between academic endeavours and recent developments in advocacy. The audience, which included university members from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, as well as local artists, community organisers, and other non-academics, responded to the issues raised in the film by interrogating their own experiences of state violence in various geographic locations, including India, the Middle East, and Chile. As our first public event, the screening was also an opportunity to position the Network and its goals within a broader field of action, and offered a chance to invite university members to join. The online dissemination of the event, both before and after, helped raise the visibility of the different organisations involved in the film and the event: MOCAO (the campaign group on whose activities the film was based), the Omega Foundation, and the network.
What were the event goals, and did we achieve them?
The main goal of the event was to stage an engaging conversation about police violence and less lethal weapons with a non-specialist audience. We were able to achieve this goal and the input from Neil Corney, our external speaker, was valuable and generative.
