German Historical Institute Rome; German Historical Institute Washington D.C.; Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte Hamburg; LWL-Institut für westfälische Regionalgeschichte Münster (Web)
Time: 20.-22.05.2026
Venue: Roma
Registration: 17.05.2026
Femicide, sexualised violence in war zones, mass shootings, #MeToo: Questions regarding the links between gender and violence are not only a near-constant focus of the German media. Particularly with the rise of social media, debates on the interplay between gender and violence have come to shape the everyday life of the global community. However, the saturation of public discourse with gender-specific narratives regarding the legitimacy or illegitimacy of physical assaults is by no means, according to the basic premise of this conference, exclusively a contemporary phenomenon. Rather, it can be traced back at least to the 19th century and the spread of popular print media, as well as to the simultaneous rise in the significance of the human sciences in explaining deviant behaviour. The focus is on the interpretation of certain behaviours as ‘violent’ or ‘non-violent’, the associated gender hierarchies, and the establishment of legitimacy – for example, through media coverage, by law enforcement agencies or in court, but also in individual interpretation and memory.
Furthermore, the conference examines whether and in what ways debates on violence and gender interacted with other categories of social inequality, particularly race, religion and class. The proposed conference addresses the long history of public negotiations on gender and violence and the associated power dynamics, and raises, not least, the question of what role those affected by violence themselves played in these negotiation processes. The thematic scope of the research includes, among other things, the history of the representation of intimate partner violence, the evolution of forensic theories, violence perpetrated by women in colonial contexts, and the memory and legal interpretation of sexual offences.
Programme
Panels: Representing Intimate Partner Violence | Gendered Spaces – Gendered Violence? | Politics and Activism: Public Negotiations of Gender and Violence | Changing Legal Approaches to Gender and Violence | Male War, Female Peace? Gendered Violence within Military and Martial Contexts Harming which Bodies? | Intersecting Forms of Violence Continue reading →