PRIF: Annual Conference 2025

Dr. Jana Baldus is Policy Fellow at the European Leadership Network (ELN) and Associate Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). Jana’s research interests include processes of multilateral nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation, and arms control, nuclear (in)justice and processes of coming to terms with nuclear legacies, and nuclear feminist policy and the implementation of feminist foreign policy in nuclear arms control and disarmament. With Caroline Fehl, she is co-leader of the project “Reprocessing a toxic past: Nuclear weapons testing and justice struggles in (post-) colonial contexts”.

Abstract
Colonial pasts and the quest for nuclear justice: addressing legacies of nuclear testing in (post-)colonial settings (together with Caroline Fehl)
Recent years have seen the rise of a number of redress and reparations movements for colonial harm, with claims for restitution often formulated in the name of “justice”. This is accompanied by a diversification of political issues that are linked to colonial violence and its persisting effects. Despite this momentum, nuclear violence, as a specific form of colonial harm, and the quest for “nuclear justice” are not given much attention in the discourse on colonial redress.  Research on nuclear colonialism and imperialism emphasizes the colonial logics underpinning nuclear violence, such as the location of nuclear test sites in historically or currently colonized spaces. Yet, this scholarship focusses primarily on resistance to nuclear colonialism and not on the struggle for redress of nuclear injustices as colonial harm.  Contributing to the growing literature on nuclear colonialism and nuclear violence on the one hand, and colonial reparations movements on the other, we locate the struggles for redress of nuclear injustices within the broader movements for justice for colonial harm. Specifically, we examine how (and indeed whether) nuclear weapons states and communities affected by nuclear violence relate this violence to colonial harm and contextualize nuclear legacies within colonial pasts. 

Dr. Tom Bentley is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen. His previous work focussed on political apologies for colonial atrocity: His book on “Empires of Remorse: Narrative, postcolonialism and apologies for colonial atrocity“ came out with Routledge in 2015. He is currently writing a book titled “Common Sense and the British Empire: The Politics of being Reasonable in Britain's Culture War”. 

Abstract
Temporal peculiarities in conservative representations of the British Empire
This paper offers an analysis of the deployment of time by conservatives engaged in the defence of the British Empire. Specifically, I capture two alternative conceptions of how conservatives present time. The first, I term the “continuous one nation” conservative approach: there is a temporal arc that links the empire with the present – a moral continuum that binds the actions of the past with today’s living community. The second is the “temporally segregated neoliberal” approach: the past is ontologically and normatively distinct from the present; it is over and complete and does not meaningfully impinge on the present. I explore these conceptions of time through an unpacking of four tropes of colonial apologia. 1. That citizens can feel pride or shame for their nation’s past. 2: That Britain provided prosperity and democracy in ways that endure today. 3. That contemporary racism and inequality are not a direct result of empire. 4. That one cannot judge the past by today’s standards. I explore how these conceptions of time hamstring contemporary demands for reparatory justice by simultaneously alleviating the current generation’s responsibility towards the injurious legacies of empire and by promoting the supposedly “positive” aspects of the enterprise. I propose that justice campaigners may wish to unravel such contradictory discourses and, indeed, deploy conservatives’ own conceptions of time against them. In the final analysis, I suggest that if conservatism is to offer any coherence in relation to time, then this ideology may counterintuitively be more open to reparatory justice than rival ideologies, such as liberalism or socialism. 

Sophia Birchinger is a Doctoral Researcher in the Research Group ‘African Intervention Politics’ at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). Her research focuses on (African) interventions, peacebuilding, theories of coercion and the everyday in international relations. In her doctoral thesis, she explores how citizens experience coercion in African interventions in The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau. In this context, she has been engaged in collaborative research practices and worked with approaches to bottom-up theorizing.

Roundtable: Changing practices and ethics of researching colonial pasts and (in)justice 
This roundtable explores how research as a practice and ethics can challenge and disrupt colonial continuities, not least through collaborative approaches to knowledge production. We seek to explore how different perspectives can be treated equally and create mutual value, but also what dangers such claims and attempts can entail. A central concern of the roundtable will be to reflect on the structural conditions under which participatory and emancipatory research takes place and to analyze the extent to which epistemic hierarchies that reproduce historically evolved inequalities continue to exist. In addition, we want to critically discuss how institutional and disciplinary structures, such as the organization of research funding or publication practices, favor or hinder an actual decolonization of knowledge production. This also addresses the ways in which such practices, especially when pursued by scholars from the Global North, can inadvertently contribute to the reproduction of existing power relations and thus undermine the intended inclusivity. In doing so, an engagement with approaches of ‘ethical partnership’ or ‘critical collaboration’ not only reveals new ways to problematize asymmetrical knowledge relations theoretically, but also to re-imagine new practices. 

Prof. Dr. Bettina Brockmeyer is Professor of Modern History at Justus Liebig University Gießen. She did her PhD on medical history at Kassel University and her habilitation on colonial history at Bielefeld University. Her publications include: Geteilte Geschichte, geraubte Geschichte. Koloniale Biografien in Ostafrika (1880-1950), Frankfurt/M. 2021; One Tooth, One Film, and One (Hi)Story? Reflections on the Role of Historiography in the Restitution Debates, in: Thomas Sandkühler, Angelika Epple, Jürgen Zimmerer (Hg.), Historical Culture by Restitution? A Debate on Art, Museums, and Justice, Göttingen 2023;  with Frank Edward and Holger Stoecker, The Mkwawa Complex. A Tanzanian-European History about Provenance, Memory, and Politics. In: Journal of Modern European History 18 (2020) H. 2.

Abstract
Violence in Collections and the Role of History
In my paper, I want to think about the role of history within the politics of restitution. I argue that decolonizing knowledge and science are long-term projects, which need in-depth historical research. To illustrate this, I will discuss forms of past violence based on the example of human remains from colonial contexts in scientific collections. I will draw attention on the aspect of violence in colonial history, in anthropological research, in political disputes – even in restitution, and violence in collections. 

Prof. Dr. Tanja Bührer is Professor of Global History at the University of Salzburg. She studied history and philosophy at the University of Bern, where she completed her PhD in 2008 with a thesis on German colonial security policy and colonial troops. This was followed by positions as senior assistant of modern history and contemporary history and as a senior lecturer in migration history at the University of Bern, as well as substitute professorships at the Universities of Rostock, Potsdam and LMU Munich. Mobility grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) have taken her to the HU Berlin, the University of Dar es Salaam, the Oxford Centre for Global History, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), the German Historical Institute London (GHIL) and the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), among others, as a visiting scholar. In 2019, she completed her habilitation at the Faculty of Philosophy and History at the University of Bern with a thesis entitled “Intercultural Diplomacy and Empire in an Age of Global Reforms and Revolutions”. Since April 2022, she is PI of the sub-project “Illegitimate Violence in the French and Austrian Military during the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars (1789-1815)” in the DFG research group “Military Cultures of Violence - Illegitimate Military Violence from the Early Modern Period to the Second World War”.

Keynote Lecture: Delimitations of Violence in Colonial Contexts
For the first time in the history of globalization, Europe is no longer among the world's leading powers and experiences how it feels to be threatened and humiliated by expanding great powers. This paper looks back on the long nineteenth century, a period in which Europe dominated large parts of the world in formal or informal ways and had the power to determine what constitutes legitimate or illegitimate violence. It argues that the legitimization of excessive violence in colonial contexts was largely a cooperative European project that was closely linked to the control of violence in Europe, and that the Congress of Vienna 1815 and the Berlin Africa Conference 1884/85 were key events in this global and trans-imperial regulation of violence.

Dr. Caroline Fehl is Interim Professor of International Politics at Helmut-Schmidt-Universität Hamburg and Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. Her research focuses on politics of international justice, on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, and on the role of international norms, institutions and organizations in international politics. With Jana Baldus, she is co-leader of the project “Reprocessing a toxic past: Nuclear weapons testing and justice struggles in (post-)colonial contexts”.

Abstract
Colonial pasts and the quest for nuclear justice: addressing legacies of nuclear testing in (post-)colonial settings (together with Jana Baldus)
Recent years have seen the rise of a number of redress and reparations movements for colonial harm, with claims for restitution often formulated in the name of “justice”. This is accompanied by a diversification of political issues that are linked to colonial violence and its persisting effects. Despite this momentum, nuclear violence, as a specific form of colonial harm, and the quest for “nuclear justice” are not given much attention in the discourse on colonial redress.  Research on nuclear colonialism and imperialism emphasizes the colonial logics underpinning nuclear violence, such as the location of nuclear test sites in historically or currently colonized spaces. Yet, this scholarship focusses primarily on resistance to nuclear colonialism and not on the struggle for redress of nuclear injustices as colonial harm.  Contributing to the growing literature on nuclear colonialism and nuclear violence on the one hand, and colonial reparations movements on the other, we locate the struggles for redress of nuclear injustices within the broader movements for justice for colonial harm. Specifically, we examine how (and indeed whether) nuclear weapons states and communities affected by nuclear violence relate this violence to colonial harm and contextualize nuclear legacies within colonial pasts. 

Moderation Panel 1: Dealing with Colonial Violence of Empire

Dr. Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann is a researcher and curator with a focus on political violence, art, co-production of knowledge, and collective ways of working. In her project “Conflict and Art: The Transformative Potential of Aesthetic Practices” at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) she investigates how political violence is negotiated, represented, and made tangible through various forms of knowledge, especially that produced by artists. Resistant and decolonial approaches are central to her work as well as her engagement with creative forms of knowledge production and dissemination. In recent years, she has been published in various media, curated numerous exhibitions, advised cultural institutions and led workshops on critical curatorial practice and politically engaged art.

Roundtable: Changing practices and ethics of researching colonial pasts and (in)justice 
This roundtable explores how research as a practice and ethics can challenge and disrupt colonial continuities, not least through collaborative approaches to knowledge production. We seek to explore how different perspectives can be treated equally and create mutual value, but also what dangers such claims and attempts can entail. A central concern of the roundtable will be to reflect on the structural conditions under which participatory and emancipatory research takes place and to analyze the extent to which epistemic hierarchies that reproduce historically evolved inequalities continue to exist. In addition, we want to critically discuss how institutional and disciplinary structures, such as the organization of research funding or publication practices, favor or hinder an actual decolonization of knowledge production. This also addresses the ways in which such practices, especially when pursued by scholars from the Global North, can inadvertently contribute to the reproduction of existing power relations and thus undermine the intended inclusivity. In doing so, an engagement with approaches of ‘ethical partnership’ or ‘critical collaboration’ not only reveals new ways to problematize asymmetrical knowledge relations theoretically, but also to re-imagine new practices. 

Dr. Festo W. Gabriel is a Senior Lecturer of History and Archaeology in the Department of Humanities at Ruaha Catholic University (RUCU) – Iringa, Tanzania. He holds a PhD (Archaeology) from the University of Pretoria – South Africa, MA (Archaeology), and BA (Hons) (History and Archaeology) both from the University of Dar es Salaam. Dr Gabriel has published numerous articles in local and international peer reviewed journals, mostly in the areas of history and cultural heritage. Apart from his publications and university teaching experience of almost 18 years, he has held different leadership positions of the university including: Head of Department (History – Stella Maris Mtwara University College), Faculty Dean (Education – Stella Maris Mtwara University College, Faculty Dean (Arts and Social Sciences – Ruaha Catholic University), Acting Deputy Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (DVCAA – Ruaha Catholic University) and Aide to the Vice Chancellor – Ruaha Catholic University), the post that he holds to date.

Abstract
Seeking Justice: Community Involvement in the Restitution and Repatriation of Human Remains of the Hehe Community from Germany
The restitution and repatriation of human remains and cultural artifacts have increased significance in addressing historical injustices and promoting healing. This paper explores the multifaceted process of seeking justice through community involvement in the restitution and repatriation of the Hehe community's human remains from Germany. It delves into the historical context, examining how these remains were acquired during the colonial era, the ethical implications of retaining them, and the importance of returning them to their rightful descendants. The Hehe community, residing in present-day Tanzania, suffered significant losses during German colonial rule in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This study investigates the enduring impact of colonialism on the community's cultural heritage and the ongoing efforts to reclaim it. By highlighting the active role of the Hehe community, the paper underscores the necessity of including Indigenous voices in restitution and repatriation processes. The paper further examines the challenges and successes of diplomatic negotiations, legal frameworks, and international cooperation in facilitating the return of the Hehe human remains. It emphasizes collaboration between governments, museums, and Indigenous communities to achieve meaningful outcomes. Through case studies and interviews with key stakeholders, the research provides valuable insights into the practical aspects of repatriation, including the logistical, cultural, and emotional dimensions. 

Dr. Katarzyna Grabska is a feminist anthropologist and a research professor at the Centre of Humanitarian Studies at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Her research examines the impact of war, political violence, humanitarianism, and displacement on gender, generation, and youth, with a particular focus on Sudan and South Sudan. She has written extensively on uncertainties in displacement and refugee return, artistic engagements in the context of war, and access to rights for refugees in urban settings. Her publications include Gender, Identity and Home: Nuer Repatriation to South Sudan (2014), Crossing Methodological Boundaries in Displacement Research (2022), and Adolescent Girls’ Migration in the Global South: Transitions into Adulthood (2019). She led the INSPIRE: Artistic Inspirations in Times of War project (2020-2024) and collaborated with artists to engage in art-based research on issues of belonging, displacement, mobilities, and identities. 

Roundtable: Changing practices and ethics of researching colonial pasts and (in)justice 
This roundtable explores how research as a practice and ethics can challenge and disrupt colonial continuities, not least through collaborative approaches to knowledge production. We seek to explore how different perspectives can be treated equally and create mutual value, but also what dangers such claims and attempts can entail. A central concern of the roundtable will be to reflect on the structural conditions under which participatory and emancipatory research takes place and to analyze the extent to which epistemic hierarchies that reproduce historically evolved inequalities continue to exist. In addition, we want to critically discuss how institutional and disciplinary structures, such as the organization of research funding or publication practices, favor or hinder an actual decolonization of knowledge production. This also addresses the ways in which such practices, especially when pursued by scholars from the Global North, can inadvertently contribute to the reproduction of existing power relations and thus undermine the intended inclusivity. In doing so, an engagement with approaches of ‘ethical partnership’ or ‘critical collaboration’ not only reveals new ways to problematize asymmetrical knowledge relations theoretically, but also to re-imagine new practices. 

Juliana González Villamizar is a Post-Doc researcher at Justus-Liebig University Gießen (Germany), philosopher from Universidad Nacional de Colombia and M.A. in Political Theory from Goethe University Frankfurt. Juliana’s research focuses on transitional justice, truth commissions and memory politics from feminist, decolonial and intersectional perspectives. She is co-editor of Comisiones de la verdad y género en países del sur global. Miradas decoloniales, retrospectivas y prospectivas de la justicia transicional (Universidad de los Andes/Instituto CAPAZ, 2021) and co-author of recent articles on the mainstreaming of intersectionality in the Colombian peace process: González Villamizar, Juliana (2023). Feminist intersectional activism in the Colombian Truth Commission: constructing counter-hegemonic narratives of the armed conflict in the Colombian Caribbean. Third World Quarterly, 45(5); González Villamizar, Juliana & Pascha Bueno-Hansen (2021). The Promise and Perils of Mainstreaming Intersectionality in the Colombian Peace Process. The International Journal of Transitional Justice 15(3).

Roundtable: Changing practices and ethics of researching colonial pasts and (in)justice 
This roundtable explores how research as a practice and ethics can challenge and disrupt colonial continuities, not least through collaborative approaches to knowledge production. We seek to explore how different perspectives can be treated equally and create mutual value, but also what dangers such claims and attempts can entail. A central concern of the roundtable will be to reflect on the structural conditions under which participatory and emancipatory research takes place and to analyze the extent to which epistemic hierarchies that reproduce historically evolved inequalities continue to exist. In addition, we want to critically discuss how institutional and disciplinary structures, such as the organization of research funding or publication practices, favor or hinder an actual decolonization of knowledge production. This also addresses the ways in which such practices, especially when pursued by scholars from the Global North, can inadvertently contribute to the reproduction of existing power relations and thus undermine the intended inclusivity. In doing so, an engagement with approaches of ‘ethical partnership’ or ‘critical collaboration’ not only reveals new ways to problematize asymmetrical knowledge relations theoretically, but also to re-imagine new practices. 

Dr. Saana Hansen is a social anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on economies of care, displacement and migration, anthropology of the state and kinship, and politics of repair and reconciliation. Her ethnographic focus is on Northern Europe (Denmark, Greenland) and Southern Africa (South Africa, Zimbabwe).

Abstract
Measuring the cost of justice: How to compensate for the forced removal of children?
This paper explores how the cost of harm and suffering are measured and monetized in contemporary compensation claims for postcolonial child removals from Greenland to Denmark. I ask how painful past experiences can be translated into legal compensation claims, and which forms of harm remain uncounted and, therefore, economically worthless. I draw on ethnographic material from two monetary reparation cases in the context of child displacement from Greenland to Denmark during the postcolonial modernity period. In this paper, I suggest that, while monetary claims can mobilize payments to individuals for non-pecuniary damages employing a human rights framework and case law, doing so focuses on eventful, clear-cut moments where human rights are breached, silencing other lived experiences and the complex production of harm. However, I argue that the state might prioritize compensation precisely because of these limitations and out-of-court settlements to avoid public and international attention. Furthermore, although money can never fully compensate for what has been lost, the compensation process can provide claimants with an official recognition and concrete words to talk about the previously unspoken past.

Dr. Asha Herten-Crabb is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of International Relations at LSE. She completed her PhD in International Political Economy at LSE in 2024. She holds a BA in Philosophy, BSc (Hons) in Genetics and Immunology, a Master in Human Rights Law from the University of Melbourne, and an MSc in infectious disease control from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She was previously Guest Lecturer for the European Institute at LSE and has worked as a researcher and policy analyst at Chatham House, the Fiji Ministry of Health, the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy, and ActionAid. Asha’s research covers international trade, health policy, and gender equality – and their intersections – with an emphasis on how global governance structures shape policy making and its outcomes at the national (UK), regional (EU, MERCOSUR), and international levels (WHO, WTO).

Abstract
Reckoning with Empire: The Imperial Foundations of the Global Polycrisis and the Case for Truth-Telling 
The contemporary global polycrisis – manifesting as climate change, economic inequality, migration crises, et al. – reveals the fragility of the liberal international order and the persistence of structural hierarchies rooted in imperialism. This paper argues that British imperialism, as a foundational force in shaping the modern international system, underpins these interconnected crises through entrenched systems of exploitation and inequality. Yet, the discipline of International Relations (IR) has largely failed to critically engage with these imperial legacies, often naturalizing the hierarchies it seeks to study. This paper advocates for a Truth-Telling Commission on British Imperialism as a vital intervention in both IR and global governance. Employing a historical-materialist methodology, the paper integrates insights from critical IR, postcolonial studies, and transitional justice to develop a framework for addressing the systemic injustices that fuel the polycrisis. Using semi-structured interviews and document analysis, the author draws comparative lessons from truth-telling mechanisms in Australia and Canada, examining how such a Commission could address the structural injustices embedded in global hierarchies, challenge the power dynamics perpetuating inequality, and provide a foundation for systemic reform. Truth-telling is conceptualized not only as a process of uncovering historical facts but as a transformative tool to connect past exploitation with present inequities and to reimagine governance structures. By foregrounding the role of historical accountability, the paper bridges a significant gap in IR, challenging the discipline’s methodological nationalism and its neglect of empire’s foundational role in global hierarchies. This paper makes three key contributions: it incorporates truth-telling into IR's analyses of power and hierarchy, presents a novel comparative analysis of the Australian and Canadian truth-telling mechanisms, and offers a practical framework for implementing a Truth-Telling Commission on British Imperialism. The findings highlight the transformative potential of truth-telling for rethinking international governance and addressing the structural inequities that perpetuate global crises. 

Dr. Rebecca H. Hogue (she/they) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto. Rebecca was raised on the island of Oʻahu in Hawaiʻi as a descendent of Scottish settlers. Her research and teaching interests include literatures of the Pacific, Environmental Humanities, Critical Militarisms, and settler responsibilities to decolonization. Prior to UofT, Rebecca completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Rebecca’s interdisciplinary work has been published in a wide range of venues, such as Amerasia, CNN Opinion, and International Affairs, where her essay was a finalist for the International Affairs Centenary Prize. She is the co-editor, along with Anaïs Maurer, of a special issue of the Journal of Transnational American Studies on “Transnational Nuclear Imperialisms” and is a member of the Nuclear Truth Project’s delegation for the 3MSP to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Rebecca is currently finishing her first monograph, Nuclear Archipelagos, which examines the roles of women’s arts and literatures in the nuclear abolition movements in Oceania.

Abstract
Breath as Remediation: Intergenerational Arts for Nuclear Abolition in South Australia
When the United Kingdom – in partnership with the Australian Government – detonated nuclear weapons on Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Country in South Australia from 1952-1963, they did so under the veil of government secrecy, further invisiblizing Indigenous health in an already long history of violence and disenfranchisement. Even after a legal return of Maralinga sacrifice zones to the community (2009) alongside attempts at environmental rehabilitation (1996-2000), the multigenerational effects of nuclear radiation would not be easily remedied nor readily understood by the public. Sixty years after the detonations, Kokatha and Nukunu artist Yhonnie Scarce’s blown glass yam mushroom cloud and bush banana installations (2016-2025) have drawn attention to the ramifications of nuclear radiation on her grandfather’s Country, particularly nuclearized food environments and Indigenous mortality. In response to her installations, Kokatha poet Ali Cobby Eckermann (2016) and Narungga poet Natalie Harkin’s (2019) wrote ekphrastic lamentations to honor Scarce’s commitments to anti-nuclear genealogies. Together these works explore the long history of Indigenous removal in Aboriginal Country and interrogate the material and aesthetic relationships between transhistorical arts and the legacies of radiation empires through place-based knowledges. These intimate archives in conversation, I argue, suggest the ways that nuclear proliferation in the 21st century is felt from the inside out: in food, in body, and in breath.  

Sait Matty Jaw is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Research and Policy Development (CRPD) in The Gambia and a political science lecturer at the University of The Gambia (UTG). His main research interests are democratization and political transformations, Gambian politics and institutions, as well as migration. Since 2018, he has been the Afrobarometer National Investigator for The Gambia. Throughout the years, Sait Matty Jaw has been implementing and participating in various collaborative research projects.

Roundtable: Changing practices and ethics of researching colonial pasts and (in)justice 
This roundtable explores how research as a practice and ethics can challenge and disrupt colonial continuities, not least through collaborative approaches to knowledge production. We seek to explore how different perspectives can be treated equally and create mutual value, but also what dangers such claims and attempts can entail. A central concern of the roundtable will be to reflect on the structural conditions under which participatory and emancipatory research takes place and to analyze the extent to which epistemic hierarchies that reproduce historically evolved inequalities continue to exist. In addition, we want to critically discuss how institutional and disciplinary structures, such as the organization of research funding or publication practices, favor or hinder an actual decolonization of knowledge production. This also addresses the ways in which such practices, especially when pursued by scholars from the Global North, can inadvertently contribute to the reproduction of existing power relations and thus undermine the intended inclusivity. In doing so, an engagement with approaches of ‘ethical partnership’ or ‘critical collaboration’ not only reveals new ways to problematize asymmetrical knowledge relations theoretically, but also to re-imagine new practices. 

Laura Kotzur is a doctoral candidate and research associate at the Center for Interdisciplinary Peace and Conflict Studies at the Freie Universität in Berlin. Her research interests include historical justice and memory studies, anticolonial thought and resistance, and participatory and reparative research methodologies.

Abstract
Reparations and reparative Justice in the (former) Metropoles of Empire
This contribution is part of Laura Kotzur's doctoral research project on reparations and reparative justice in the (former) metropoles of colonialism, more concretely on the historical and contemporary reparations struggles after the British Empire. Examining the spatial and temporal unfolding of the reparations movement in the UK, this contribution seeks to investigate how demands for reparatory justice have challenged and continue to challenge the current state of the colonial and imperial metropoles. The analysis draws on the resisting and emancipatory potential of reparations for historical justice navigating the space between opportunity and co-option as well as on a contextualized understanding of metropole and periphery. What are the different demands for reparations and reparative justice after the British Empire? How do (post)colonial configurations within the (former) metropoles contribute to making sense of struggles around historical justice in contemporary European societies? And finally, how do the diversifying global actors and their demands for reparations challenge the multifaceted dimensions of empire and metropole? Thinking with a conjunctural-processual framework of reparations, this contribution suggests that reparations are a necessary framework to think about the interweaving of past, present and future while critically investing and blurring the lines of metropole and periphery. This will be complemented with insights and first findings from field research in Britain and participatory action research over the past two years drawing on participatory observations, interviews, archival data and joint organizing. This contribution aims to contribute to discussing how claims for reparations have shaped the (former) metropoles of empire.  

Mathilde Kraft holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney and graduated from Sciences Po Paris in 2019 with a master’s in international security, focussing on ocean and climate change in Oceania. Originally from France, in the last ten years she has been a regular guest to the region and lived in Australia, Māo’hi Nui / French Polynesia, Samoa and Fiji. Working for the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, she has supported Pacific Island countries and territories for rights-based, gender sensitive and socially inclusive ecosystem-based climate change adaptation. A research associate of the “Nuclear Justice and Gender in the Sea of Islands” project and doctoral candidate at the University of Hamburg, her doctoral research explores the possibilities for nuclear, climate and gender justice with communities impacted by the French nuclear testing program in the Tuamotu archipelago in Mā’ohi Nui.

Abstract
Colonial Legacies and Environmental Justice in the Sea of Islands: Comparing Nuclear Testing and Climate Change Compensation 
Since World War II, the Sea of Islands has faced two major socio-ecological crises with lasting existential impacts: nuclear testing and climate change. From the 1940s to the 1990s, nuclear testing in Māòhi Nui/French Polynesia, the Marshall Islands, and Kiribati caused widespread contamination and environmental damage, including the destruction of fishing grounds, and forced resettlements. Climate change, meanwhile, presents severe threats through rising sea levels, extreme weather, and loss of livelihood.  Both crises are rooted in colonial histories, with powerful states denying the rights of local populations. In both cases, island communities and governments have called for justice and compensation. In international regimes on climate change and nuclear weapons control, discussions on loss, damages as well as victim/survivors’ assistance are increasingly prominent.  This paper compares compensation claims and policies related to nuclear testing and climate change. It explores how these mechanisms may reflect and reinforce colonial power dynamics, for example if they are used as geostrategic tool to enhance influence. It will focus on the USA, France, and Great Britain – responsible nuclear powers and high-emission countries. The aim is to provide insights into compensation mechanisms that better align with the calls for justice from nuclear survivors and climate activists. 

Dr. Jonatan Kurzwelly is a Senior Researcher at the at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, and a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State (South Africa). He leads a DFG-funded project on “Contradictions in Deradicalisation Processes” and the NetIAS-funded interdisciplinary research group “Over Their Dead Bodies” and is co-leader of the Research Group Radicalization, Terrorism, and Extremism Prevention at PRIF. His research and writing focus predominantly on theories of personal and social identities, essentialism, nationalism, radicalization and extremism.

Abstract
Bones of Injustice: The limits of corrective justice in contemporary research and restitutions of colonial-era skeletal remains
Historically human remains and skulls in particular have served to produce various forms of scientific racialization and racism, confining people to fixed notions of identities and legitimizing violent systems of exploitation and oppression. Many academic institutions and museums have amassed thousands of mortal remains of people from all over the world, people whose lives and deaths are often directly and indirectly connected to numerous forms of injustice. Contemporary handling of these human remains aims to account and atone for the violent past, examining the provenance of particular human remains and often leading to their restitution. This contemporary practice can be seen as effective – to an inevitably limited extend – in providing redress, reconciliation, rest for the deceased and spiritual and emotional ease for the living, and in shining light onto the historical injustices and their continuities. Nevertheless, despite virtuous motivations, it also carries certain ethical risks and poses several conceptual and practical problems. This presentation will present some of such problems inherent in the contemporary handling of skeletal remains, such as: the reliance on reified, essentialist and often racialised notions of ethnicity, nationality and indigeneity; an unwitting support of the diverse political agendas at play; and the risks of reductive and excluding effects of the post-/de-colonial framework in which such research and restitutions are often framed. This critique applies not only to human skeletal remains, but also to numerous other domains of contemporary society and post-/de-colonial scholarship and practice. 

Moderation Panel 3: Legal Ways to Justice?

Dr. Sabine Mannitz is head of the Research Department Glocal Junctions and a Member of the Executive Board at PRIF as well as PI and Directorate Member at the Research Center Transformations of Political Violence – TraCe. She holds a Magistra Artium degree in Ethnology from Goethe University Frankfurt and did her PhD with distinction in Cultural Studies at European University Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder. Her work sits at the intersection of social identities, politics of recognition, and practices of remembrance in political cultures. One of her research fields is the present-day implications of historical violence. In the ongoing project “Evils of a Global Past” Sabine studies dynamics of post-colonial genocide memory and reconciliation politics.

Abstract
The role of legal ways in creating and in tackling colonial systems of injustice
Together with Núrel Bahi Reitz, this presentation examines the dual role of law in both sustaining and contesting colonial systems of injustice, with a comparative focus on Canada and Namibia. In both contexts, legal systems were central to establishing and maintaining colonial rule, serving to dispossess Indigenous peoples, control their movement and labor, and legitimize the unequal distribution of land, resources, and rights. At the same time, law has also served as a critical site of resistance: Indigenous communities have appropriated legal frameworks to assert sovereignty, demand reparations, and advance claims for justice. This presentation explores how legal mechanisms served as instruments of repression but also became tools for Indigenous advocacy. By highlighting these tensions, it underscores the complex and often paradoxical role of legal systems in both entrenching colonial power and enabling pathways toward decolonial futures.

Jephta Uaravaera Nguherimo is a US-based writer and activist. He has been engaged in the struggle for reparatory justice for decades related to the OvaHerero and Nama genocide. Jephta's research pieces together the unwritten memory of the OvaHerero people and develops educational materials in remembrance of the victims of the genocide of 1904-08. His hope is to engage in educational activities to inform German scholars about German colonialism and genocide in Namibia.

Moderation Roundtable: Changing practices and ethics of researching colonial pasts and (in)justice 
This roundtable explores how research as a practice and ethics can challenge and disrupt colonial continuities, not least through collaborative approaches to knowledge production. We seek to explore how different perspectives can be treated equally and create mutual value, but also what dangers such claims and attempts can entail. A central concern of the roundtable will be to reflect on the structural conditions under which participatory and emancipatory research takes place and to analyze the extent to which epistemic hierarchies that reproduce historically evolved inequalities continue to exist. In addition, we want to critically discuss how institutional and disciplinary structures, such as the organization of research funding or publication practices, favor or hinder an actual decolonization of knowledge production. This also addresses the ways in which such practices, especially when pursued by scholars from the Global North, can inadvertently contribute to the reproduction of existing power relations and thus undermine the intended inclusivity. In doing so, an engagement with approaches of ‘ethical partnership’ or ‘critical collaboration’ not only reveals new ways to problematize asymmetrical knowledge relations theoretically, but also to re-imagine new practices. 

Núrel Bahí Reitz holds an M.A. degree in Peace and Conflict studies from the Philipps University Marburg and a B.A. in International Economics and Development from Bayreuth University. She is currently a PhD candidate at Leiden University’s African Studies Centre and researcher at PRIF. Nurel's research focuses on the processes through which historical violence is attributed meaning, particularly within the context of postcolonial relationships. Her work examines how colonial atrocities – specifically those committed by the German colonial government during the genocide in former German Southwest Africa (1904–08) and Majimaji in former German East Africa (1905–07) – are represented, narrated, and engaged with in political and civic spheres. She is particularly interested in how interpretations of these crimes differ or align, and how these interpretations shape the ways these events are addressed both locally and internationally. Additionally, her research explores how civil society and political actors contribute to shaping specific patterns of interpretation.

Abstract
The role of legal ways in creating and in tackling colonial systems of injustice
Together with Sabine Mannitz, this presentation examines the dual role of law in both sustaining and contesting colonial systems of injustice, with a comparative focus on Canada and Namibia. In both contexts, legal systems were central to establishing and maintaining colonial rule, serving to dispossess Indigenous peoples, control their movement and labor, and legitimize the unequal distribution of land, resources, and rights. At the same time, law has also served as a critical site of resistance: Indigenous communities have appropriated legal frameworks to assert sovereignty, demand reparations, and advance claims for justice. This presentation explores how legal mechanisms served as instruments of repression but also became tools for Indigenous advocacy. By highlighting these tensions, it underscores the complex and often paradoxical role of legal systems in both entrenching colonial power and enabling pathways toward decolonial futures.

Lina Schneider is a doctoral researcher at Goethe University as part of the Transformations of Political Violence (TraCe) research consortium. Her work focusses on the adaptation of Transitional Justice mechanisms to colonial redress in exploitation colonial contexts, transnational actors in epistemic practices, and evolving mechanisms for state accountability in global governance.

Abstract
International Elites or Local Activism: Assessing the International Network behind the Belgian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
This paper investigates the international network underpinning the Belgian Parliamentary Special Commission on Colonial Past, analyzing the involvement of transnational actors and international organizations during its establishment, implementation, and functioning. Drawing on global governance and transnational justice theories, it examines how international institutions and (transnational) victim groups shape national transitional justice mechanisms. These mechanisms, often embedded in broader global contexts, are influenced by trans- and supranational dynamics that extend beyond national borders, including the interplay of international institutions, norms and local demands for justice. 

The central argument posits that international and transnational actors play critical roles at multiple stages of transitional justice mechanisms, from design to operationalization and performance. Specifically, the paper argues that UN frameworks and advocacy by transnational groups were instrumental in legitimizing the Commission, shaping its mandate, and maintaining its functioning. These actors bridged local and global dimensions of justice, demanding the Commission's alignment with international norms while addressing specific historical grievances tied to Belgium’s colonial past.  Empirically, the paper examines archival records, interviews, and secondary sources to trace the involvement of key actors such as the United Nations, international NGOs, and Congolese diaspora groups. It also explores the dynamics of stakeholder engagement, assessing how these networks mediated between global expectations and domestic constraints.  The case of the Belgian Commission shows that national transitional justice initiatives are embedded in a broader ecosystem of international influence. It highlights the crucial role of inter- and transnational actors in enabling institutional legitimacy, fostering victim participation, and facilitating cross-border accountability for redressing historic violence in national context. 

Aigerim Seitenova is a human rights professional and nuclear justice advocate from Kazakhstan. She is the Co-Founder of the Qazaq Nuclear Frontline Coalition, an initiative that addresses the collective fight for justice for those affected by Soviet nuclear testing in her home region. Through intergenerational advocacy, the Coalition works on both a global and national level to raise awareness and seek justice. Aigerim is a third-generation survivor of Soviet nuclear testing in Semipalatinsk, which profoundly shaped her professional career. Aigerim holds an LL.M in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex and an MA in European Studies from Yerevan State University and Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. She is also a producer and a director of the documentary film "JARA – Radioactive Patriarchy: Women of Qazaqstan" which is going to be screened starting in March 2025.

Abstract
Re-examining nuclear justice: human rights centered, feminist and decolonial approaches to address nuclear legacies of frontline communities
This research focuses on an interdisciplinary analysis of gendered impact of ionizing radiation in Kazakhstan. Through a comprehensive needs assessment of the nuclear affected women in Abay region, it aims to explore impacts of the state-sponsored and technology-driven gender-based violence resulting from 40 years of Soviet nuclear testing. The author goes beyond traditional approach of analyzing the consequences of nuclear testing and its legacy by applying human rights centered, feminist and decolonial approaches as means to achieve justice. Additionally, the author examines the role of nuclear-frontline communities in addressing harm in multilateral spaces while advocating for nuclear disarmament and highlighting epistemic injustices in the academic and policy fields. As a result, this research addresses the social and cultural consequences of technocratic governance and militarization on communities harmed by nuclear weapons tests in Kazakhstan.

Dr. Valence Valerian Silayo is a lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with research interests in African archaeology, precolonial defense systems, socio-political structures, social complexities, the materiality of precolonial societies, restitution and reparation of human remains, ethnographic objects, and community heritage management. He is currently a Gerda Henkel Fellow at the Linden Museum, Stuttgart, focusing on the Chagga ethnographic objects. His project addresses the lack of a transparent database and detailed provenance for these collections, examining their cultural history, significance, and use during their time of collection, their relevance today, and the context in which they were acquired during colonial times.

Abstract
Exploring Justice: The Connections Between Restitution and Social Identity in African Societies
This study explores the complex relationship between restitution and social identity in African societies, aiming to reveal how justice is navigated and enforced through both traditional and contemporary mechanisms. Restitution, defined as compensating for harm or loss, is deeply embedded in the social fabric of African communities. It addresses wrongs committed while reinforcing social bonds and communal harmony. This paper focuses on the Chagga society, emphasizing customary laws and traditional practices that prioritize restitution over punitive justice. Using a multidisciplinary approach that includes anthropology, sociology, and archaeology, this research examines how restitution processes shape social identity. It investigates the roles of elders, community leaders, and traditional courts in administering justice, along with how these institutions adapt to modern challenges like urbanization and globalization. The study also looks at the interplay between restitution and other forms of justice, such as retributive and restorative justice, to comprehensively understand justice in African contexts. Furthermore, the research delves into the impact of social identity - defined by ethnicity, kinship, and status - on the perception and implementation of restitution, detailing how these identities influence expectations and outcomes in justice processes. The paper argues that restitution is not merely a legal mechanism but a crucial component of social cohesion and identity in African societies. This study contributes to the broader discourse on justice and social identity by bridging the gap between traditional and modern justice systems. It emphasizes the necessity of context-specific approaches to addressing justice and highlights the potential of restitution in fostering sustainable peace and reconciliation.

Dr. Siddharth Tripathi is Senior Research Fellow at the Faculty of Economics, Law and Social Sciences, University of Erfurt, Germany, where he leads the BMBF funded project on postcolonial hierarchies in peace and conflict. Prior to that he was as a Senior Research Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen. He has held various teaching and research positions at Willy Brandt School of Public Policy Erfurt, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs/Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) Berlin and Brussels, the Institute of Diplomacy Kabul and Lady Shri Ram College for Women (LSR), University of Delhi. In his current research he focuses on the politics of knowledge production in IR and peace and conflict studies as well as decolonial and postcolonial praxis. He has published in leading IR journals and edited the Rowman and Littlefield Handbook on Peace and Conflict Studies: Perspectives from the Global South which is a collaborative endeavour of academics from the Global North and the Global South.

Roundtable: Changing practices and ethics of researching colonial pasts and (in)justice
This roundtable explores how research as a practice and ethics can challenge and disrupt colonial continuities, not least through collaborative approaches to knowledge production. We seek to explore how different perspectives can be treated equally and create mutual value, but also what dangers such claims and attempts can entail. A central concern of the roundtable will be to reflect on the structural conditions under which participatory and emancipatory research takes place and to analyze the extent to which epistemic hierarchies that reproduce historically evolved inequalities continue to exist. In addition, we want to critically discuss how institutional and disciplinary structures, such as the organization of research funding or publication practices, favor or hinder an actual decolonization of knowledge production. This also addresses the ways in which such practices, especially when pursued by scholars from the Global North, can inadvertently contribute to the reproduction of existing power relations and thus undermine the intended inclusivity. In doing so, an engagement with approaches of ‘ethical partnership’ or ‘critical collaboration’ not only reveals new ways to problematize asymmetrical knowledge relations theoretically, but also to re-imagine new practices. 

Dr. Milla Vaha is a Senior Lecturer of Politics and International Affairs at the School of Law and Social Sciences, The University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji. Her research focuses on ethics of world politics, and she has published widely on the right and responsibilities of states, particularly in relation to Pacific Island Countries. In her current work, she investigates the interconnectedness between the nuclear legacy and climate change in the Pacific region.

Abstract
Ethics of world politics – nuclear and climate justice in the Pacific
The Pacific region was chosen as an atomic testing ground in the post-World War II era by France, the United Kingdom and the United States. Between 1946 and 1996, over 300 nuclear devices were detonated in Australia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands and French Polynesia. This paper discusses the ongoing impacts of nuclear testing in the region, as well as proposes a framework for reparative justice for the island communities that have suffered from the nuclear colonialism. By looking at the calls for justice raised by these affected communities, the paper situates the nuclear colonialism with the contemporary threat of climate change. The paper argues that nuclear legacy together with the climate crisis offers a strong case for reparations owed to the Pacific communities. 

Juliette Vargas Trujillo is a lawyer from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and holds a Master of Laws (LLM) from the Humboldt University of Berlin. Her academic and professional experience has focused on international criminal law, international human rights law and environmental law. Juliette has worked in research and strategic litigation with organisations such as the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers' Collective (CAJAR). In recent years she has worked on issues related to Transitional and Restorative Justice and the challenges of their implementation in Colombia. Since 2018 she is also a scientific collaborator of the German – Colombian Institute for Peace – CAPAZ, and since 2024 a doctoral candidate at the Catholic University of Louvain – KU Leuven.

Abstract
Nature as victim of the armed conflict in the Colombian transitional setting: A way of post-colonial justice? 
One of the most innovative decisions of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the judicial component of a comprehensive system of transitional mechanisms created after the 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the former guerrilla group FARC-EP, has been the acknowledgement that beyond human casualties, nature has been also a victim of the armed conflict. Currently over nine indigenous and Afro-descendant territories, along with a River have been accredited as victims in different cases under investigation. Two indictments have addressed the victimhood of nature in a herculean effort to interpret (international) criminal law. This landmark has been regarded by some scholars as a form of epistemic justice insofar as the legal decisions of the JEP embrace ancestral knowledge that has been historically marginalized by hegemonic Western legal systems. Moreover, scholars as Killean consider that Colombia is “developing one of the first examples of an environmental restorative justice” in transitional settings.

Indeed, the introduction of the restorative justice paradigm within the JEP procedure has made possible these innovative legal decisions as far as it allows for intercultural dialogues between victims and justices, deepening the possibilities of a more effective participation of ethnic communities. Furthermore, the fact that 8 out of 38 JEP justices are indigenous and Afro-descendant, has been crucial to establish epistemic openings and flexibilization of western legal thinking from inside. Against this backdrop, based on research conducted in 2022 and my field experience with ethnic communities participating at the JEP, this presentation delves into the debates and tensions around the subjectivity of nature as a tool for redressing colonial oppression. Thus, while the notion of legal personhood is rooted in a colonial past of slavery and oppression, the legal activism of ethnic communities in the context of Colombia's transition is permeating monolithic legal categories such as property and victimhood, fostering crucial transformations in the interpretation of law, as well as harnessing the tools of restorative justice for more holistic measures of socioecological restoration and reparation.

Dr. Simone Wisotzki is a member of the Executive Board and senior researcher at Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) and a private lecturer in the Department of Political Science at TU Darmstadt. She works at PRIF's Research Department International Security on issues of humanitarian arms control (small arms and light weapons, landmines, cluster munitions) and arms export control. She also deals with issues of warfare, human security, and international humanitarian law. Feminist peace research is an important focus of her research and teaching. Simone Wisotzki is the first chair of the Working Group on Peace and Conflict Research (AFK).

Moderation Panel 2: Nuclear Colonial Legacies and (In)Justices 

Dr. Antonia Witt is Head of the Research Group “African Intervention Politics” at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). Her research focuses on authority and legitimacy in the international realm, African regional organizations, and the local politics of (African) interventions. She has been leading several international collaborative research projects with scholars. Antonia has published her research inter alia in the Review of International Studies, Millennium, International Peacekeeping, and the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.

Moderation Roundtable: Changing practices and ethics of researching colonial pasts and (in)justice 
This roundtable explores how research as a practice and ethics can challenge and disrupt colonial continuities, not least through collaborative approaches to knowledge production. We seek to explore how different perspectives can be treated equally and create mutual value, but also what dangers such claims and attempts can entail. A central concern of the roundtable will be to reflect on the structural conditions under which participatory and emancipatory research takes place and to analyze the extent to which epistemic hierarchies that reproduce historically evolved inequalities continue to exist. In addition, we want to critically discuss how institutional and disciplinary structures, such as the organization of research funding or publication practices, favor or hinder an actual decolonization of knowledge production. This also addresses the ways in which such practices, especially when pursued by scholars from the Global North, can inadvertently contribute to the reproduction of existing power relations and thus undermine the intended inclusivity. In doing so, an engagement with approaches of ‘ethical partnership’ or ‘critical collaboration’ not only reveals new ways to problematize asymmetrical knowledge relations theoretically, but also to re-imagine new practices. 

Dr. Kaya de Wolff is a media scholar and a postdoctoral researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt within the regional center Transformations of Political Violence – TraCe . She obtained her PhD with a study on the recognition of the Genocides against the Ovaherero and Nama in the German press coverage (Transcript, 2021, Open Access). Her current project investigates the histories of violence and resistance during enslavement, colonialism, and dictatorship in Brazil, focusing on their contemporary (re)mediations in cultural spaces and digital media. Her recent publications include articles in international peer-reviewed journals, such as Cultural Dynamics, the Journal of Transitional Justice, forthcoming contributions in the Journal for Genocide Research and Memory Studies as well as chapters in the Routledge Handbook for Transformations of Political Violence (co-authored with Astrid Erll), Routledge Companion for Memory and Media, and the BRILL Handbook for Memory Studies in Africa (co-authored with Namibian reparation activist Jephta Nguherimo).

Moderation Panel 4: Restitution Dilemmas

Annual Conference 2025

Colonial Pasts and Contemporary Search for Justice: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Restitution and Redress for Colonial Violence

Program

Speakers

Sponsors and Partners

Annual Conference 2025

Thursday, 25 September

Friday, 26 September

Speakers

Baldus, Jana

Bentley, Tom

Birchinger, Sophia

Brockmeyer, Bettina

Bührer, Tanja

Fehl, Caroline

Fuhrmann, Larissa

Gabriel, Festo W.

Grabska, Katarzyna

González Villamizar, Juliana

Hansen, Saana

Herten-Crabb, Asha

Hogue, Rebecca H.

Jaw, Sait Matty

Kotzur, Laura

Kraft, Mathilde

Kurzwelly, Jonatan

Mannitz, Sabine

Nguherimo, Jephta Uaravaera

Reitz, Núrel Bahí

Schneider, Lina

Seitenova, Aigerim

Silayo, Valence Valerian

Triparthi, Siddharth

Vaha, Milla

Vargas Trujillo, Juliette

Wisotzki, Simone

Witt, Antonia

de Wolff, Kaya