Lecture 'Border forensics – (Counter) Archiving Border violence'
- For whom
- Alumni , Employees , Students
- When
- 02-02-2026 from 16:00 to 18:30
- Where
- Technicum T2, 1.15, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, 9000 Ghent
- Language
- English
- Organizer
- CESSMIR, HRRN, MENARG, Department of Social Conflict & Development, Department of Social work and Social Pedagogy, TAPAS
- Contact
- floor.verhaeghe@ugent.be
- Website
- https://cessmir.be/en/activiteit/public-lecture-border-forensics-counter-archiving-border-violence/
Lecture by the director of research of the Border forensics investigation agency, on documenting and archiving evidence on border violence.
Prof. Heller, co-leader of the research of the Forensic Oceanography project (2011-2021) and of the Border Forensics agency (since 2021), has lead more than 10 investigations over 15 years. Each one of them offers a probe into the evolution of Europe’s borders and the forms of harm they inflict onto the lives of migrants who dare transgress them. Together they have come to constitute entries of an archive of sorts – an archive of border violence.
In this presentation, prof. Heller will seek to consider the trajectory of investigations he has led through the prism of the archive, and explore some of the directions it conjures. He will argue that thinking of our investigative practice as an archive opens a broader temporality that is particularly important to consider in relation to a form of violence – that of borders – which, just as slavery or colonialism, is enduring and its end illusive.
The lecture will conclude with a debate with Julija Kekstaite, Tristan Solf & Neslihan Dogan.