H2020 Project “Reconciling Europe with its Citizens through Democracy and the Rule of Law”

(RECONNECT)

ESPOL-LAB is a partner in the RECONNECT (Reconciling Europe with its Citizens through Democracy and the Rule of Law) project. This 4-year multi-disciplinary project funded by the European Union under the framework programme H2020. The project brings together a consortium of 18 academic partner institutions from 14 countries, coordinated by KU Leuven. RECONNECT aims at understanding and providing solutions to the recent challenges faced by the European Union. With an explicit focus on strengthening the EU’s legitimacy through democracy and the rule of law, RECONNECT seeks to build a new narrative for Europe, enabling the EU to become more attuned to the expectations of its citizens. A special focus is on EU economic and fiscal policy, on terrorism, international commerce and on migration. Members of ESPOL-LAB contribute particularly to work package 6 ‘Practices of democracy’ and in work package 11 ‘Counter-terrorism’. Read more

Towards « just conservation »: linking theories and practices of justice in biodiversity conservation

(JUSTCONSERVATION)

JUSTCONSERVATION is a 3-year research project led by ESPOL and funded by the Centre for the Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity (CESAB) of the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB). The project involves colleagues from 9 research institutions, based in 7 different countries, and aims at theories and practices of justice in the conservation of biodiversity.The project will fill a critical gap in current efforts to significantly advance the knowledge on ways to achieve both the social and ecological objectives associated with the conservation of biodiversity.

Collaborative Observatory on Terrorism, Anti-Terrorism and Violence

(O.C.T.A.V.)

ESPOL-LAB participates in the ‘Collaborative Observatory on Terrorism, Anti-Terrorism and Violence’ (O.C.T.A.V.). This is an initiative of scientists from various disciplinary backgrounds, supported and funded by LabToP-CRESPPA-Paris8-CNRS, ESPOL-ICL, REPI-ULB and CERI-SciencesPo/CNRS. Its members address issues related to “terrorism” and “anti-terrorism” by questioning their relationship to the contemporary transformations of violence and politics. To this end, O.C.T.A.V.’s activities are carried out in two formats: a university research seminar and a series of “practitioner meetings” (under Chatham House Rules) with professionals from the fields of security, defence, intelligence, justice and social work. The sessions of the research seminar and the practitioner meetings alternate around the same theme.

The working group emerged from the observation that there have never been as many episodes of so-called “terrorist” violence as there have been since the 1970s and the gradual institutionalisation, in France, Europe and the United States notably, of what we have come to call “anti-terrorism”. Far from suggesting that “anti-terrorism” would generate “terrorist” violence, it rather means to reject the terrorism/anti-terrorism opposition that has structured political, media and expert discourse ever since. From the 1970s onwards, largely fuelled by experts and the media, the political discourse has constantly pitted “terrorism” against “anti-terrorism”, exclusively presenting the latter as the state’s response to “terrorist” violence. In so doing, the political discourse ignores the mimicry of practices which, since that time, is at the heart of the emergence of anti-terrorism: the more “terrorism” has been described as a new form of violence whose entrepreneurs would act as a network, the more security, defence and intelligence actors have been called upon to organise themselves in turn as a network, via increased use of computing tools, and to develop a renewed form of state intervention against the violence labelled as “terrorist”. It is this renewed form of state intervention against so-called terrorist violence that is now called anti-terrorism.