Author: Yuliya Brin

The event is organized by Aleksanteri Institute and Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki

Dates: 28-29 October 2024

Location: Helsinki, Finland

Deadline for proposals: 15 May 2024

Call for papers

The Faculty of Law in cooperation with Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki is pleased to announce the annual conference organised by the Development of Russian Law research project, which will take place in Helsinki on October 28-29, 2024. This conference continues the series of workshops, seminars, and conferences originated in comparative legal scholarship on post-Soviet law and legal transformations, organized by the Faculty of Law since 2008.

Russian aggression against Ukraine perpetrated on 24 February 2024 changed the agenda for legal research and practice not only in the region, but worldwide. It highlighted the need for profound change in approaches to international law, security, rule of law and other fundamental concepts that were coined after WWII and with the emergence of the UN as a guarantor of new, peaceful international legal order.

We would like to invite scholars and legal partitioners to reflect upon how law operates in the times of war, providing a comparative context for seeking legal solutions to end Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

We encourage submissions of individual papers and full panels in the following themes and beyond:

•  International law of war: what are the boundaries of (il)legal?
•  Legal theories of war: when the war is (un)justified?
•  Criminal prosecution of war crimes: are the criminal tribunals (in)effective?
•  Humanitarian law: civilians and protection under international law;
•  Gender and war: sexual violence in conflict and beyond;
•  Gender and war: women, peace, security agenda for international communities;
•  Ecocide: how does environment change during the war?
•  Russian aggression against Ukraine: legal solutions for the illegal conflict;
•  Asylum seeking and refugees in the time of war: international experiences;
•  What did we learn from the Yugoslav Wars: using law to establish peace?
•  Kosovo, Nagorno Karabakh, Crimea and legal solutions for contested territories

We welcome legal researchers from across disciplines to join our discussions of current issues in legal studies and law. We especially encourage younger scholars and graduate students to apply.

The working language of the conference is English. All presentations and discussions are held in this language.

The proposals shall be submitted by 15 May 2024.

Links for registration:

individual paper submission: https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/128283/lomake.html  

panel proposals: https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/128286/lomake.html

On Wednesday 22.2.2023, 16-18 (Helsinki time), Joanna Bourke will be the guest speaker in the Christina Research Seminar. This session will be chaired by Professor Marianna Muravyeva.  

Joanna Bourke (Birkbeck): Sexual Violence in War  

Abstract: Violence is an essentially contested concept. Never is this more the case than during war. Military conflict not only lowers the threshold at which interpersonal violence can take place, but it also dramatically alters the nature of that violence. In this talk, Joanna Bourke explores these issues in relation to sexual violence. She focuses on questions of language, ethics, the politics of representation, trauma, and gender. She concludes by asking what can be done to eradicate sexual violence during armed conflicts as well as civilian contexts.  

  Bio: Joanna Bourke is Professor of History at Birkbeck University of London, and a Fellow of the British Academy. She is also the Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College. Bourke is the Principal Investigator and Director of an interdisciplinary Wellcome Trust-funded project entitled ‘SHaME’ (Sexual Harms and Medical Encounters, which explores medical and psychiatric aspects of sexual violence). She is the prize-winning author of fifteen books, as well as over 120 articles in academic journals. Among others, she is the author of Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain, and the Great War, An Intimate History of Killing (which won the Wolfson Prize and the Fraenkel Prize), Fear: A Cultural History, What it Means To Be Human, The Story of Pain, and Wounding the World: How Military Violence and War-Play are Invading Our Lives. In 2022, Reaktion Books published Disgrace: Global Reflections on Sexual Violence (also published by Chicago University Press) and Oxford University Press published Birkbeck: 200 Years of Radical Learning for Working People. Her books have been translated into Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, Czech, Turkish, and Greek. 

The talk will be organized as a hybrid event. Helsinki-based participants can attend the talk on campus. It will take place in the University of Helsinki’s Main Building, room U3032. Remote participant can join the talk via Zoom.  

Please register to the event via this form: https://forms.gle/ohuRetpbPCWZ9H7V6 

Those who have registered to attend via Zoom will get the event link before the event.  

We look forward to seeing you there!  

The Christina Research Seminar is an open advanced seminar focused on interdisciplinary gender studies chaired by Professor Tuija Pulkkinen. The seminar is organized as part of the doctoral programme of Gender, Culture and Society (SKY) by Gender Studies, University of Helsinki.