April 15th-17th 2026
Dialogics of Justice (NWO-VICI) – Final Conference
Looking back on the conference
After five years of research, dialogue, and collaboration, the Dutch Research Council (NWO) project Dialogics of Justice (DoJ) at the University of Humanistic Studies concluded with a three-day conference (15-17th April 2026) on this question: How to repair historical injustice?
Looking back, we are especially proud of the project’s interdisciplinary character and of the space it created for encounters between lawyers, plaintiffs, scholars, activists, stakeholders, artists, and survivors. Throughout the conference, academic scholarship and lived realities continuously informed one another, allowing for conversations that moved beyond institutional and disciplinary boundaries.
Importantly, the conference also challenged the tendency to approach injustice on a case-by-case basis. Instead, it highlighted the relationality between different forms of Dutch institutional injustice and their international counterparts: the failure to prevent genocide in Srebrenica, military atrocities in Indonesia, environmental and human rights violations in the Niger Delta connected to Royal Dutch Shell, abuse within the Catholic Church and the Good Shepherd institutions, as well as the gas extraction crisis in Groningen, the Child Benefit Scandal, and intercountry adoption practices. Rather than discussing isolated “cases,” we reflected on broader systematic practices of harm and on the fragmented and limited forms of recognition and justice that often follow.
As Hasan Nuhanović, who held the Dutch state accountable for its conduct during the Srebrenica genocide, remarked during the conference: “The Dutch narrative in regard to Srebrenica is ‘they did not do enough’; while the problem is not what they have not done but what they did.” His words underscored the importance of confronting responsibility not only through absence, but through action.
Another recurring theme concerned what participants described as “performances of distance”: the institutional and emotional mechanisms that prevent people from truly seeing or feeling the realities of injustice. As Annemie Knibbe-van Dijck reflected: “You need to know people to feel it.” Similarly, James Gallen emphasized how many redress schemes remain detached from rights-based justice: “Most redress schemes ignore rights but just provide gestures.”
We were honoured to welcome human rights lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld and Nigerian public interest litigation lawyer Chima Williams, who reminded us that these struggles are not primarily about compensation, but first and foremost about recognition and respect — “to see us, to respect us” — and ultimately about broader collective goals, including the protection of civilians and of nature. As Paul Gready noted, courts can function as “civic education venues.”
The conference also showed how art can open spaces for justice and connection in ways that legal and academic language sometimes cannot. Lily Abichahine delivered a powerful performance on how language can divide rather than connect us, while bringing the current destruction in Gaza and Lebanon painfully close. Questions of archiving and memory emerged here as forms of Transitional Justice, resonating strongly with Julia Viebach’s reflections on archives as a means of achieving justice — insights that will continue to inspire our own archiving process.
We are deeply grateful to everyone who contributed to making this conference such a meaningful and memorable gathering. While this marks the conclusion of the Dialogics of Justice (DoJ) project, it is certainly not the end of the conversations and research it generated. The work will continue within the chair of Historical Memory and Transformative Justice.
About the conference
The last decade has witnessed an increase in civil proceedings brought before Dutch district courts by people adversely affected by colonial violence, military missions, sexual abuse, and environmental harm. Does legal action against institutions such as the Dutch state, the military, the church, and multinationals bring about the recognition and justice that people long for? What are chances and limitations of civil law to do justice? How do these cases resonate with large scale society-wide scandals regarding the massive human rights violations in the child benefit affair (‘Toeslagen’) and the gas extraction in Groningen; and the massive deficits of those reparation programs? Which conditions are conducive, and which less favourable for people to feel recognized? And what is the role played by state- and non-state institutions in enabling recognition procedures to become transformative?
In the five-year research project Dialogics of Justice – funded by a VICI-grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) – we examined at the University of Humanistic Studies in an interdisciplinary team these questions to contribute to making future recognition and reparation procedures more effective and transformative. Our cross-case study aimed to broaden the classic Transitional Justice focus on mass human rights violations towards social, economic, and ecological violence. We advocate for a Transformative Justice Approach; for us this means to see and reveal the logics of systemic/institutional injustice and identify the coloniality in all our cases; also in the repair instruments.
This is our final conference, presenting the research findings and reflecting on them with (inter)national scholars, stakeholders and representatives of injured parties; the gains and losses of such legal processes (in a wider sense); the merits of a related approach (when being productive or unproductive), the role of the imagination (art), and looking for lessons learned in bringing the local/global into a conversation. Our conference seeks multiple dialogues, between law/humanities, academia/activism, North/South, facts/imagination. To foster exchange and build networks the full attendance of participants is highly valued.
Join us for our kick-off public event on April 15th at BAK Basecamp, with human rights advocate Liesbeth Zegveld as our keynote speaker. Hasan Nuhanović, who together with Zegveld held the Dutch state liable for the killing of his family during the Srebrenica genocide, and his daughter Nasiha will then share their expertise and experience on the lived and transgenerational impact of court cases. On the 16th and 17th the conference will continue at the University of Humanistic Studies (see the programme for details).
Feel very welcome to come, the conference is free.
If you want to attend please fill out this form.
Full program:
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