Book seminar with Christoph Sperfeldt

Practices of Reparations in International Criminal Justice

During this lunchtime seminar, Christoph Sperfeldt from Macquarie University will discuss his recent book Practices of Reparations in International Criminal Justice (CUP 2022). Combining interdisciplinary techniques with original ethnographic fieldwork, the book examines the first attempts of international criminal courts to provide reparations to victims of mass atrocities. The observations focus on two case studies: the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, where the author spent over ten years working at and around, and the International Criminal Court's interventions in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Enriched with first-hand observations and an awareness of contextual dynamics, the book directs attention to the 'social life of reparations' that too often get lost in formal accounts of law and its institutions. The book shows that reparations are constituted and contested through a range of practices that produce, change, and give meaning to reparations. Appreciating the nature and effects of these practices provides us with a deeper understanding of the discrepancies that exist between the reparations ideal and how it functions imperfectly in different contexts.

Speaker bio

Christoph Sperfeldt is Senior Lecturer at Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University. He is also Fellow at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Stanford University, Honorary Fellow at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness and Adjunct Professor at the Center for the Study of Humanitarian Law at the Royal University of Law and Economics in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Prior to joining academia, he worked for more than a decade on human rights and transitional justice in Southeast Asia. Christoph will be visitor at the UCPH Faculty of Law with MOBILE from 7 August to 3 September 2023.

Further information:

More information about the book is available via this link.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://ucph-ku.zoom.us/j/63169610241?pwd=YWU1WnY3bWpyQ1FqSDVWM1VuMHRCZz09

Meeting ID: 631 6961 0241
Passcode: 968451