Facets of War: critical voices on contemporary conflicts

The event features presentations from selected contributors outlining their main arguments, alongside an exhibition of artworks featured in the issue, accompanied by explanatory texts. This 2025 special issue of Criminological Encounters focuses on the urgent need to understand war from a global anti colonial, criminological, and interdisciplinary perspective, giving space to resistance and activism. By bringing together scholars and artists, the event fosters dialogue across disciplines and creative practices to critically examine how violence, surveillance, and resistance are experienced, represented, and silenced in different contexts.

The special issue explores how debates surrounding genocide and mass violence—particularly in relation to Palestine and Israel—are controlled and silenced within academic institutions in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Canada. It also examines historical experiences of surveillance and social control in Africa and their representation in local artistic production. Other contributions address the gendered and sexualized dimensions of war and repression, including the impact of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine on women and LGBTQ+ people, as well as the West’s use of “gender disorder” narratives in depictions of Iran. The issue further engages with questions about the use of artificial intelligence in targeting civilians, the limitations of international criminal justice, and the lived experiences of refugees from Syria in Turkey and from Afghanistan in Canada. It also considers the social movement against the militarisation in South Korea, highlighting global and intersectional forms of resistance.

As the issue includes a curated artistic intervention, the event will conclude with a reading of one of the theatre monologues written by the Ashtar Theatre Company (Jerusalem), reflecting on the lives and perceptions of people in Gaza before 2023.

Through these combined elements—academic presentations, visual art, and performance—the event promotes interdisciplinary dialogue, critical reflection, and creative collaboration on the harms of war and the possibilities for solidarity and resistance.

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Host or Publisher Imagine! Belfast Festival of Ideas & Politics