Events organised or supported by the Network.
Report on Reborn Eyes Event, 16th March 2024
The screening of the film Reborn eyes: story of a movement in resistance contributed to the Justice and Violence Network’s aims of disseminating research outputs beyond specialist audiences and fostering accessible conversations about violence, justice, and accountability. The event included a discussion with our invited speaker Neil Corney, researcher at the Omega Foundation, who provided a broad context of the history and the current state of affairs regarding the use and regulation of less-lethal weapons worldwide. By giving an overview of the activities, campaigns, report findings, and even artefacts from Omega’s research into policing tools and practices, Neil’s remarks helped contextualise the film and Lucía’s research, as well as generating important connecting threads between academic endeavours and recent developments in advocacy. The audience, which included university members from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, as well as local artists, community organisers, and other non-academics, responded to the issues raised in the film by interrogating their own experiences of state violence in various geographic locations, including India, the Middle East, and Chile. As our first public event, the screening was also an opportunity to position the Network and its goals within a broader field of action, and offered a chance to invite university members to join. The online dissemination of the event, both before and after, helped raise the visibility of the different organisations involved in the film and the event: MOCAO (the campaign group on whose activities the film was based), the Omega Foundation, and the network.
What were the event goals, and did we achieve them?
The main goal of the event was to stage an engaging conversation about police violence and less lethal weapons with a non-specialist audience. We were able to achieve this goal and the input from Neil Corney, our external speaker, was valuable and generative.
