Workshop Researching Femi(ni)cide in Times of Backlash

This workshop explores the present and future of femi(ni)cide research against a complex backdrop shaped by both external threats and internal contestations. Even as the backlash against feminism intensifies and far-right politics gain strength, the notion of femi(ni)cide is being increasingly challenged from within. Scholars across disciplines draw attention to the limits and exclusions of the concept, the difficulties of its legal adoption, and the tensions in the cultural memories, narratives, and imaginaries linked to it. The workshop reflects on these issues and discusses how they can be addressed to arrive at understandings of extreme violence against women that are more expansive, nuanced, and complex. Rooted in the present and thinking toward the future, the workshop asks how we might reframe how we study femi(ni)cide – in gender studies, sociology, human rights law, memory studies, and beyond – to meet evolving challenges.

The first part of the workshop includes individual presentations on recent developments in femi(ni)cide research by Ana Miranda Mora (gender and postcolonial studies), Lorena Sosa (human rights law), Martín Hernán Di Marco (sociology), and Sofía Forchieri (comparative literature and memory studies). The second part of the workshop consists of a roundtable discussion between the speakers followed by a conversation with the workshop participants. We will discuss question such as: How can we expand the concept of femi(ni)cide to better account for the multiple forms of violence that can shape extreme violence against women (e.g., drug-related violence, racism, transphobia)? What are some of the dilemmas, exclusions, and technical difficulties in the legal adoption of the concept and how could they be overcome? What stories continue to inform violence against women? And what new, alternative stories could be articulated to counter them? In the face of renewed desensitization toward femi(ni)cide and the persistent spectacularization of this violence, what practices of memory and imagination might help keep alive the memory of the victims and open new understandings and sensibilities?

The workshop will conclude with a reception.

This event is free, but please register by sending an email to Sofía Forchieri (s.forchieri@uu.nl).

Programme

13:15    Walk in and registration with coffee and tea

13:30    Welcome and introduction

13:45    Lorena Sosa: “Femicide in Law: Promise, Peril, and the Politics of Recognition”

14:00   Martín Hernán Di Marco: “Of Stories and Pathways: What Can We Learn from                  Perpetrators’ Narratives?”

14:15    Ana Miranda Mora: “Outlines for Understanding Feminicidal Structural Violence”

14:30    Sofía Forchieri: “Reframing Feminicide Remembrance through Literature”

14:45    Break

15:00    Roundtable discussion

15:45   Q&A with the Workshop Participants

16:15    Reception

About the speakers

Ana Miranda Mora holds a PhD in Philosophy from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and serves as an Assistant Professor of Gender and Postcolonial Studies in the Department of Media and Culture Studies and the Graduate Gender Programme at Utrecht University. Her research focuses on the intersection of political and legal philosophy, Critical Theory, and Contemporary Feminist Theory. She is a member of the Research Project Gen(der) AI Safety and the Research Network for Culture, Law and the Body. Since 2024, she has been Associate Editor of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy.

Lorena Sosa is an Associate Professor of Human Rights Law at Utrecht University, member of the Utrecht Centre for European Research into Family Law (UCERF), a member of the core team of the UU IOS (In)Equality Platform , and coordinator of the EQUALS Platform at the Law School. Her research examines how human rights and equality norms are shaped, contested, and implemented across legal systems, with particular attention to structural inequality, gender-based violence, and feminist and intersectional methodologies. She has published extensively on gender-based violence, including femicide.

Martín Hernán Di Marco is Assistant Professor of Violence and Violence Prevention at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University. He holds degrees in sociology and epidemiology and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo. He is Managing Editor of NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies, Secretary of WG11 Violence and Society, and Treasurer of RC38 Biography and Society at the International Sociological Association. He is a founding member of the Inter-American Anti-Femicide Network and author of Narratives of Femicide Perpetrators in Latin America: Taking Lives (Springer, 2025).

Sofía Forchieri is finishing her PhD at Radboud University Nijmegen and is currently employed as a lecturer in Literary Studies at Utrecht University. Her research focuses on contemporary Latin American women’s writing, memory studies, and decolonial feminisms. Her dissertation, “Discomfort Work: Reframings of Feminicide in Latin American Literature,” explores how recent literary works from Latin America interrogate and expand existing structures of feminicide remembrance. Sofía’s work has appeared in journals like Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Memory Studies, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, and Journal of Perpetrator Research.