Name: Interdisciplinary Conference on Acknowledging Sexual Violence
Start: 2026-02-26T10:00:00+00:00
End: 2026-02-27T17:30:00+00:00
Location: Friends House

Join us at the Interdisciplinary Conference on Acknowledging Sexual Violence for insightful discussions and impactful conversations.
About this Event

This conference focuses on how policy discourses structure what counts as violence, whose voices are heard, and which responses become possible. It examines how lived experience is translated into administrative, legal and political categories, and how that translation can both enable and limit recognition, justice and care.

The two-day structure is designed to bring together policy analysis and humanistic insight:

Day One focuses on policy language and institutional frameworks — examining how violence against women and girls is defined, measured, governed and responded to within law, economics, advocacy and public policy.

Day Two turns to the humanities — literature, philosophy and narrative — as ways of rethinking how violence is acknowledged. This day explores how experiences that exceed policy categories can be better understood, expressed and acknowledged, and how these insights might inform more responsive and humane public frameworks.

Together, the conference aims to support more precise, just and effective ways of speaking about violence in policy, institutions and public life.

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Keynote Speakers

Professor Jonathan Herring

Professor of Law, University of Oxford

Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford

with

Dr Marthe Goudsmit Samaritter

Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law

Legal scholar in human rights and gender-based violence

Professor Leigh Gilmore

Professor of English and Trauma Studies, Ohio State University