Professor Kovras awarded with ERC funding

The Department is pleased to announce the successful securing of a 2 million euros funding under the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant by Associate Professor Joseph Kovras. His 5-year research project is titled “Disappearing Act: reconstructing the Crime of Disappearances in Times of Political Violence” (DISACT).

Approximately 1,000 people ‘disappear’ every day in deeply divided societies, and conflict areas. However, our knowledge of the historical origins of the crime or the motivations that drive paramilitary groups or repressive regimes to adopt enforced disappearances is limited. For example, when was the crime o f enforced disappearances invented and how did it spread internationally? Why do only some violent actors systematically use the tactic of disappearances, while others avoid them? In answering these questions, the DISACT research project will combine ethnographic, forensic, legal and archival data, thus deepening our knowledge of one of the most complex crimes of our time.