About the TJ Centre

The Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction is one of the eight governing research centres that encompass the Network for Economic and Social Trends (NEST), which brings together the research centres in the Faculty of Social Science.

The Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction was established in late 2009. It brings together experts from across the Western community whose teaching and research focuses on issues including reconciliation, criminal accountability, post-colonial legacies, legal reconstruction, the environment, human rights, economic justice, healing circles, democratization, and more.

Our aim is to be a world-wide centre of excellence in scholarship on transitional justice and post-conflict reconstruction through collaborative, interdisciplinary and international research amongst faculty, undergraduate, graduate, and professional students and postdoctoral fellows.

Events

Toward International Principles on Gender Persecution: Advancing Human Rights and Accountability

Panel discussion by:
-Karima Bennoune, University of Michigan Law School
-Gissou Nia, Strategic Litigation Project, Atlantic Council
-Huma Saeed, MADRE
-Rangita de Silva de Alwis, High-Level Group of Legal Experts on Gender Persecution

Tuesday, September 10, 2024
4:00-5:30 pm

Register for online access here: https://www.masseycollege.ca/events/toward-intl-principles-on-gender-persecution/


Past as a Political Tool: Collective Memory and Exclusionary Politics

Dr. Kate Korycki, TJ Centre & Western University's Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies
Friday, March 15, 2024
3:30-4:30 pm
Social Sciences SSC 6210


From Discrimination to Death: Genocide Process through a Human Rights Lens

Dr. Melanie O'Brien, Visiting Professor at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota, and President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars
Friday, March 8, 2024
4:00-5:00 pm
Social Sciences SSC 6210


20 Days in Mariupol, Director: Mstyslav Chernov

Free Film Screening - A documentary about the first weeks of war.
Monday, February 26, 2024
6:00-8:00 pm
Weldon Library Community Room, Ground Floor


Advancing  Digital Peacebuilding: Digital Methods to Support Child Protection Initiatives

Dr. Yadira Lizama-Mué, TJ Centre & Western University's Cultureplex Lab
Friday, February 9, 2024
4:00-5:00 pm
Social Sciences SSC 6210


NEST Distinguished Speaker Series

Geoff Dancy, University of Toronto
Friday, January 12, 2024
2:00-3:30 pm
Social Sciences SSC 6210


Gender Justice in Liberian Peace Huts - Options for Survivors of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

Loyce Mrewa, Western Law PhD Candidate
Thursday, October 26, 2023
12:00-12:50 pm
Social Sciences SSC 6210


Violence, Recovery and Healing

A Speaker Series
Huron University


Conducting Research in Ukraine During War

Professor Marta Dyczok, Western University Departments of History and Political Science
Thursday, September 19, 2023
12:00-12:50 pm
Social Sciences SSC 6210


Child Soldiers and Transitional Justice

Professor Mark Drumbl, Washington & Lee Faculty of Law
Monday, February 13, 2023
3:30-4:30 pm
Social Sciences SSC 3026


The Future of Genocide Studies Panel

Thursday, November 17, 2022
5:00pm, via Zoom

Panel: Dr. Lemos (presiding), Ben Kiernan (emeritus, Yale University), Doris Bergen (University of Toronto), Victoria Tin-Bor Hui (University of Notre Dame), Andrew Woolford (Manitoba), and Lindsey Scorgie-Porter (Huron).  

Poster


Cambridge World History of Genocide, Book Launch

Thursday, November 17, 2022
4:00-5:00 pm, via Zoom 

Panel: Dr. Lemos (presiding), Ben Kiernan (emeritus, Yale University), Doris Bergen (University of Toronto), Victoria Tin-Bor Hui (University of Notre Dame), Andrew Woolford (Manitoba), and Lindsey Scorgie-Porter (Huron). 


Ebola was a threat to our Peace, we had to stop it! Informal Caring Motivations, Liberian Women and the 2014 Ebola Epidemic

Thursday, November 24, 2022
3:30-4:30 pm
Social Sciences SSC 2024


Gender-Based Persecution and the International Criminal Court: Prosecution Strategy and Policy

Thursday, Dececember 1, 2022
3:30-4:30 pm 
Social Sciences SSC 2024


 

News

PhD Student Jacob Evoy on Transitional Justice, Queerness and Intergenerational Trauma

Transitional Justice PhD student Jacob Evoy, who uses they/them pronouns, successfully defended their doctoral dissertation in June 2024 and plans to share their work during Queer Research Day this fall, an annual event at Western showcasing graduate student research through presentations, academic posters and one-day programming across campus.

Evoy studied in the department of gender, sexuality and women’s studies in Western’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities [and was part of the TJ Collaborative Graduate Specialization]. They focus on the study of transitional justice – a response to human rights violations that seeks to recognize victims – in post-conflict resolution and intergenerational trauma and queerness.

Evoy developed an oral history of a marginalized group, interviewing 16 queer children of Holocaust survivors and gathering information on their life experiences as members of both Jewish and queer communities.

Full story can be found on Western News.


Conducting Research in Ukraine During War

Prof. Marta Dyczok, of Western University's Departments of History and Political Science, presented a TJ Speaker Series talk titled 'Conducting Research in Ukraine During War' on September 19, 2023. Prof. Dyczok spent the month of August 2023 researching in Ukraine. She spoke about her experiences in Ukraine and how those experiences have impacted her research. A recording of the talk is available here.

Featured in the Western Alumni Magazine


Ukraine: One Year After Russia’s Escalated War

On February 27, 2023, the Centre held an online conference, Ukraine: One Year After Russia’s Escalated War. The first panel, chaired by Prof. Marta Dyczok, focused on information warfare, with speakers Yevhen Fedchenko, Journalism School, University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy; Andriy Kulykov, Hromadske Radio, Ukraine; and Roman Horbyk, Södertörn University College, Sweden. 

The second panel, International Criminal Law and Russia's War on Ukraine, was chaired by Prof. Valerie Oosterveld, with speakers Kateryna Busol, National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy (on investigating conflict-related sexual violence); Wayne Jordash, Global Rights Compliance Law Firm and Foundation (on crime investigations in Ukraine); and Jennifer Trahan, New York University Center for Global Affairs (on the proposal for a tribunal on aggression). 

The conference was sponsored by the Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction; Western Law's Public and Private International Law Research Group; Faculty of Social Science; Department of History; and the Department of Political Science.

Videorecordings of the conference are available here: 
Russia's War Part 1.mp4
Russia's War Part 2.mp4

TJ Centre faculty member Prof. Kate Korycki has published a new book, Weaponizing the Past: Collective Memory and Jews, Poles and Communists in Twenty-First Century Poland, with Berghahn Books as part of its Worlds of Memory series. Weaponizing the Past explains why and how political elites in post-regime transition spaces narrate the past for political gain and what effects are produced by their preoccupation with collective remembering. First presenting a new theory of politicized memory and then telling the story of post-transition Poland, in which many different political actors narrate communism as evil and connected with Jewishness, Weaponizing the Past shows how democracy, progressive ideals, and notions of national belonging are narrowed and constricted. By exploring the contours of present-day anti-communism the book traces the operation of contemporary antisemitism, as well as its most recent implication with right-wing populism.


TJ Centre Acting Director Prof. Valerie Oosterveld has published a co-edited volume (with Indira Rosenthal and Susana SáCouto) titled Gender and International Criminal Law with Oxford University Press. The last few decades have seen remarkable developments in international criminal justice, especially in relation to the pursuit of individuals responsible for sexual violence and other gender-based crimes. Historically ignored, justified, or minimized, this category of crimes now has a heightened profile in the international political and judicial arena. Despite this, gender is poorly understood, and blind spots, biases, and stereotypes prevail.

Gender and International Criminal Law brings together leading feminist international criminal and humanitarian law academics and practitioners to examine the place of gender in international criminal law (ICL). It identifies and analyses past and current narrow understandings of gender, before considering how a limited conceptualization affects accountability efforts. The authors consider how best to implement a more nuanced understanding of gender in the practice of international criminal law by identifying possible responses, including embedding a sophisticated gender strategy into the practice of ICL, the gender-sensitive application of international human rights and humanitarian law, and encouraging a gender-competent approach to judging in ICL. The authors' aim is to strengthen efforts for accountability for all atrocity crimes-war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression.

 

More about the centre

Cropped from Jogging Hamlet by Jaroslav Havelka

Art Gallery

Anna Dolidze

Experts