Violence, Gender, and International Justice in 20th Century EuropeAn ERC Taming the European Leviathan Workshop

25 September 2025

Photo: Public Domain

The Centre for the Study of Health, Ethics, and Society is delighted to welcome Professor Herbert Reginbogin (Catholic University of America Institute for Policy Research) and Dr Stefano Serafini (University of Padova) for an ERC ‘Taming the European Leviathan’ workshop hosted at the Centre on the 9th October 2025 at 2:00pm.

This workshop, open to all, will consider the intersections between violence, gender, and international relations across the 20th century, from Fascist Italy to the contemporary legacy of the Nuremberg Trials against a backdrop of the war in Ukraine. It will explore how representations of violent masculinity and sexuality in fascist-era literature coincided with increasing structural inequalities in Mussolini’s Italy, alongside questions on how gender shaped the experiences of power and violence in the Nazi concentration camps. The workshop also traces the historical trajectory of international research and policy to prevent the use and development of chemical and nuclear weapons—from the fears of intergenerational harm articulated by post-war scientists to the challenges facing global disarmament regimes, and the rule of international law today. It concludes by assessing what place the legacy of the Nuremberg Principles has in a rapidly changing world in which authoritarianism is shaping science, violence, and international relations.

Workshop schedule

2:00 pm – Welcome (Ulf Schmidt)

2:15 pm – Unmaking the Veteran: Masculinity, Demilitarization, and Violence in Giovanni Comisso’s Il delitto di Fausto Diamante (1933 (Stefano Serafini)

3:00 pm – Coffee Break

3:15 pm – Thirty Years of the Chemical Weapons Convention (Ulf Schmidt)

3:30 pm – ‘Woe to You for Being a Grandchild’: Mutations and the Ethical Case Against WMDs Among Post-War British Geneticists (David Peace)

4:00 pm – Gender and Power in a Nazi Concentration Camp (Kate Docking)

4:30 pm – Coffee Break

4:45 pm – Keynote: The Nuremberg Principles in the Contemporary World of Science, Violence, and International Relations in the 20th and 21st Centuries (Herbert Reginbogin)

All are welcome to attend this event, hosted at Edmund Siemers Allee 1, Room 127, although space is limited. If you would like to attend, please contact Deniz Inci (deniz.inci@uni-hamburg.de).