(Im)materialities of Violence

An interdisciplinary series of events dedicated to addressing contemporary violence in its haunting (im)material manifestations that specifically through the entangled foci on the bio-/necropolitical framework and outcomes of terrorism, counterterrorist law, and securitization processes.

This particular research events series has been organised by Dr. Katharina Karcher and Dr. Evelien Geerts, and is part of the Urban Terrorism in Europe (2004-19): Remembering, Imagining, and Anticipating Violence ERC-project (University of Birmingham).

The UrbTerr project documents and analyzes a range of voices in contemporary debates on urban terrorism in Europe via concepts and methods from memory studies, cultural studies, feminist theory, and anthropology while problematizing the narrow concept of imagination and creativity underpinning recent counter-terrorism measures and a great part of the academic literature on this subject.

(Im)materialities of Violence investigates how (terrorist) violence does something to embodied subjects and the environments they inhabit. At the same time, it frequently provokes acts, processes, and praxes of radical undoing, dispossession, and disposability and complete erasure that tend to go hand in hand with politically exploited dehumanizing discourses. This double-layeredness of violence – its doing and undoing – is mirrored by the fact that violence involves both human and more-than-human actors, and moreover engenders material and immaterial effects.

By means of intimate research panels, keynotes by Prof. Dr. Rosi Braidotti (Utrecht University), Prof. Dr. Amade M’charek (University of Amsterdam), and Prof. Dr. Susanne Krasmann (University of Hamburg), and book presentations by Prof. Dr. Brad Evans (University of Bath) and Em. Prof. Dr. Nina Lykke (Linköping University), (Im)materialities of Violence wants to do justice to the abovementioned triple complexity, that is – violence’s (un)doing, (more-than-)humanness, and (im)materiality. It does so by spotlighting contributions from disciplines as diverse as philosophy, feminist theory, memory studies, cultural studies, history, and anthropology, while making space for new materialist, posthumanist, and affect theoretical approaches and conceptual frameworks.

You can register for the keynotes and book presentations (which are all open to the public and will include live Q&A sessions).

Full details of the programme may be found on the registration page

Our research blog also has further information.