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Events

Talk by Giovanni Mantilla

On Monday 8 March, Dr. Giovanni Mantilla (University of Cambridge) will give a talk on “Lawmaking under Pressure. International Humanitarian Law and Internal Armed Conflict”. The talk will be online via zoom. To register and obtain the login data for the videoconference, please contact w.m.wagner@vu.nl.

Public Lectures on Peace-Theology 2021: POST-COLONIAL APPROACHES to building Just Peace

Building Peace with Justice constantly investigates power relations, asks for the different perspectives involved in a conflict, and strives to pay specific attention to those, whose voices are usually silenced. In this regard, postcolonial studies provide indispensable knowledge and wisdom.

Postcolonialism is the academic study of the cultural legacy of colonialism, focusing on the human consequences of the control and exploitation of colonized people, their lands, their bodies. It is a critical theory analysis of the history, culture, literature, and discourse of European imperial power. The ambiguous term colonialism refers to a world view underlying that system.

In general, postcolonialism represents an ideological response to colonialist thought. On a simple level, it may seek to build a better understanding of colonial life from the point of view of the colonized people, based on the assumption that the colonial rulers have produced “unreliable narrators”. On a deeper level, postcolonialism examines the social and political power relationships that sustain neocolonialism, including the social, political and cultural narratives surrounding the colonizer and the colonized. This approach may draw examples from history, political science, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, human geography – and theology!

Christian theology and theological ethics are in fact a late comers in the broad research on postcolonialism. But certainly, the de-colonization of theology has become one of the most progressive and revealing attempts of our times.

This series of public lectures intends to provide some more general ways of thinking as well as presenting examples from specific contexts. The discussions following the lectures will seek to explore the implications for building just peace.

Tuesday / Thursdays, 13.30-15.15 h

Location: online (Zoom) 

  1. April 2021 “Epistemic Violence” – Revisiting Just Peace from Postcolonial Perspective(s)

Prof. Dr. Fernando Enns & Friederike Cord

Fernando Enns holds the chair for (Peace-) Theology and Ethics at the VU Amsterdam. He is also the director of the Amsterdam Centre for Religion and Peace & Justice Studies, and the director of the Center for Peace Church Theology at the University of Hamburg. Fernando's research focuses on peace and justice from a theological and ethical perspective. 

Friederike Cord is the Research Assistant and PhD candidate the Center for Peace Church Theology at the University of Hamburg/Germany. 

  1. April 2021 Theologising Brexit: A Liberationist and Postcolonial Critique

Prof. Dr. Anthony G. Reddie 

Anthony Reddie is the director of the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture. Anthony is also Professor Extraordinarius in the Department of Philosophy, Practical and Systemic Theology at the University of South Africa.

  1. April 2021 Healing or Haunting? Towards a Postcolonial Theology

Prof. Dr. Judith Gruber

Judith Gruber is a Research Professor at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, at KU Leuven. She is also the coordinator of the Centre for Liberation Theologies, which carries out academic research at the interface of Systematic Theology and significant challenges of the contemporary societies.

  1. April 2021 Modernidad/Des-colonialidad en los procesos de construcción de paz de las mujeres afrocolombianas¨/“Modernity/Decoloniality in the Peacebuilding Processes of Afro-Colombian Women”Dr. Betty-Ruth Lozano 

Dr. Betty Ruth Lozano Lerma is Director of Research in the Fundacion Universitaria Bautista (Baptist University Foundation) of Cali (Colombia).

  1. April 2021 Civil Disobedience and Theological Reflections on Hong Kong Anti-Extradition-Bill Movement – from a Post-Colonial Perspective

HsinYin Yu

HsinYin Yu is a Research-Master Student of “Peace, Trauma, and Religion” at the VU-Faculty of Religion and Theology at VU Amsterdam, and currently working on her thesis regarding this topic.

  1. April 2021 Is God a White Racist? Wake work for Theology

Prof. Dr. Robert Beckford

Robert Beckford is professor of Black Theology at The Queen's Foundation, and Associate Professor of Black Theology at the VU Amsterdam. He is also a BAFTA award winning documentary filmmaker. He has written and presented over twenty films for the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery USA.

Registration

To attend these lectures, please register by filling in the following form:

https://forms.gle/BEEUXrZQxbc5yghu5

You will receive the ZOOM invitation by Email before each lecture.

Workshop on 'Prototype Warfare: New Regimes of Computation, Experimentation and War'

On 25 and 26 March, 15.00-18.00, Marijn Hoijtink organizes an academic workshop on 'Prototype Warfare: New Regimes of Computation, Experimentation and War'. The workshop will be online. People who are interested can register via M.Hoijtink@vu.nl.

Talk by Séverine Autesserre

On Thursday, 20 May, 16.00 to 17.30, Séverine Autesserre (Columbia University) will present her book “The Frontlines of Peace”.

Interdisciplinary Conference September 2021

The interdisciplinary conference that was initially planned for September 2020 had to be postponed to 23 and 24 September 2021.

The conference will be opened on 23 September at 10.00, followed by a keynote speech by Prof. Stephen Pinker (Harvard University) about Human Nature and the Decline of War.

In the afternoon of 23 September and the in the morning of 24 September, there will be seconds on

  • Norm Violations and Punishment in International Politics
  • Transgenerational Transfer of Trauma
  • The Social Ecology of Trust and Peace versus Distrust and Aggression
  • The Distributed Work of Warfare

A final panel will bring together academics and practitioners to discuss the state and future of peace and conflict research. Confirmed speakers are

Prof. Jolle Demmers (Utrecht University)

Miriam Spruyk, PAX

Prof. Jaap de Wilde (University of Groningen)

Hans van der Jagt, Ministry of Defense

The final panel will be chaired by Wolfgang Wagner (VU).

Previous Events

On 12 December 2019. Prof. Scott Shapiro (Yale University) presented and discussed his book “The Internationalists” (co-authored with Oona Hathaway).

In the spring of 2018, PACS organized and video-recorded a series of lectures on key issues in peace and conflict research that can be viewed here: