Confronting the ‘violence of the archive’: crime, punishment and the modern state

Workshop and Call for Papers

Historical Criminology Network members Dr Kate West and Dr Thomas Guiney have announced an event they are organising which will be held at Oxford Brookes University on 22 May 2019. They say

"This 1-day workshop will confront the inherent ‘violence of the archive’ as a key site of collective ‘remembering’ and ‘forgetting’. It will consider the various ways in which the modern state has produced, and subsequently projected knowledge with regards to crime and punishment.

Drawing upon insights from the growing field of historical criminology this workshop will explore this dynamic to encourage new perspectives on the relationship between state and (non-)citizen within criminal justice settings; the lived experiences of individuals subject to state authority; the inner workings of closed penal institutions; and aspects of the penal policy-making cycle which remain hidden from public view. 

Participants will consider the inherent challenges of using state-sanctioned primary sources that risk obscuring, silencing and reconfiguring lived experience and counter-memories. Accordingly, the temporal scope of this workshop is book-ended by the ‘birth’ of the modern state and the ambiguities of contemporary statehood."

More information and the full call for papers can be found here. The deadline for submissions is 29 March. Both event and CFP deadline can be found in our new calendar, by clicking on the 'Events' tab above. 

City of Oxford: panoramic view of the High Street with views of the colleges and churches. Etching by H. Toussaint. Via Wellcome Images CC-BY-4.0