Time: Mon Sep 29, 2025 – Tue Sep 30, 2025, All Day
Location: 1050 Jenkins Nanovic Halls
Disappearance Studies Conference
The Journal of Disappearance Studies, in collaboration with the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, invites you to attend its inaugural conference, scheduled to take place from September 29 – 30, 2025, at the University of Notre Dame.
This landmark event marks the official launch of the Journal of Disappearance Studies, edited by scholars affiliated with the University of Bristol, Durham University, and the University of Tampere, which offers an interdisciplinary platform to examine the phenomenon of disappearance worldwide. The conference will convene scholars, practitioners, policymakers, artists, families of the disappeared, and advocacy organizations to explore the socio-political, cultural, and economic dimensions of disappearance.
Conference Schedule
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29
- 9:45 AM – 10:15 AM: Opening remarks – Room 1050 Jenkins Nanovic Halls
- 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM: Panel 1, Memory, Art, and Embodied Testimony – Room 1050 Jenkins Nanovic Halls
- Alison Ribeiro de Menezes – From Disappearance to Disappearability: Natalia Beristáin’s Ruido (Noise, 2023)
- Cheryl Lawther – The Political Lives of Ireland’s Missing: Ownership, Agency and the Demands of the Dead
- Teri Murphy – From Indignity to Dignity: Search as Healing
- Portia Chigbu – For Those Washed Away: State Obligations in Addressing Involuntary Disappearances During Natural Disasters
- 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM: Break
- 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM: Panel 2, Power, Politics, and Mobilization– Room 1050 Jenkins Nanovic Halls
- Bahar Baser, Shivan Fazil and Élise Féron – Missing in the Shadows: Forced Disappearances of Yezidis and the Search for Truth
- Carlos Martin Beristain – Criterion of psychosocial work in the investigation of forced disappearances in Guatemala, Mexico, and Colombia
- Carmen Hassoun Abou Jaoude – The National Commission for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared in Lebanon: challenges and opportunities
- Gerasimos Tsourapas – Colonial Legacies and Authoritarian Circulations in Libya’s Disappearance Regime
- 3:00 PM – 3:30 PM: Break
- 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM: Evening Keynote, Luz Janet Forero Martinez, Director General of the Search Unit for Missing Persons in Colombia – Hesburgh Center Auditorium
- 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM: Reception – Jenkins Nanovic Halls Forum
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30
- 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM: Panel 3, Legal and Forensic Responses to Disappearance – Room 1030 Jenkins Nanovic Halls
- Lauren Dempster – Forensic Scientists in Transitional Justice: Challenges and Possibilities in the Search for the Disappeared
- Gunes Dasli & Nisan Alici – Understanding Political Responses to Enforced Disappearances in Divided Societies
- Mónica E. Nuño Nuño – Jalisco and enforced disappearances: a forensic crisis and mass graves
- 10:30 AM – 11:00 AM: Break
- 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM: Panel 4, Irish Perspectives on Disappearance – Room 1030 Jenkins Nanovic Halls
- Sandra Peake – Orchestrated loss and the Disappeared of Northern Ireland’s Conflict
- Dympna Kerr – My brother Columba
- Orla Lynch – Victims of political violence – a very public trauma
- Phil Scraton – Disappearance, Loss and Searching: the Cruel Legacy of Mother and Baby Institutions
- Jennifer O Mahoney – Disappearing girls and women: Gendered state violence and the ethics of institutional memory in postcolonial Ireland
- 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM: Book Launch, The Disappeared: The Hidden Victims of Northern Ireland’s Conflict by Sandra Peake and Orla Lynch – 1030 Jenkins Nanovic Halls
- 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM: Panel 5, Feminist & Gendered Approaches to Disappearance – Room 1050 Jenkins Nanovic Halls
- Élise Féron – Feminist Approaches to Disappearances – Epistemologies of Activism and Resistance
- Anush Petrosyan – War that Lingers: The Embodied Legacies of the Armenian – Azerbaijani Conflict
- Tinotenda Chisambiro – The Stories of the Forgotten: Gendered Narratives of Disappearances in the Second Chimurenga
- Salina Kafle – Gendered Dimensions of Enforced Disappearances in Nepal: Addressing the Challenges of Women Survivors in Transitional Justice
- 3:00 PM – 3:30 PM: Break
- 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM: Panel 6, Unresolved Absence and the Search for Meaning – Room 1050 Jenkins Nanovic Halls
- Cath Collins – TBD, e.g., “Seeking ‘Destino Final’: The Limits of Resolution in Enforced Disappearances across Latin America”
- Julie Bernath – Syrian women’s everyday practices of ‘accounting for’ the disappeared
- Rahaf Aldoughli – Loss, Loyalty, and the Emotional Aftermath of Disappearance: Syrian Fighters and the Mobilizing Power of Absence
- Vilho Shigwedha – Missing people, amnesty, and reconciliation politics: The case of disappearance and unmarked war graves in northern Namibia
- 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM: Evening Keynote, Simon Robins – Hesburgh Center Auditorium
Registration for the conference is free but required. Please contact Elizabet Campos Duarte at eduarted@nd.edu to register.
Originally published at irishstudies.nd.edu.
