Professor Valérie Rosoux

Max Planck Law Fellow

Valérie Rosoux is currently Director of research of the National Fund for Scientific Research (Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique—FNRS) in Belgium and Professor in the School of Political and Social Sciences, University of Louvain. She is qualified in three disciplines (philosophy, political science and law), speaks three languages fluently (French, English and Dutch), has been honoured with multiple research stays abroad (UK, Canada, France, US, South Africa), is actively involved in many scientific networks (journals, research agencies, professional associations) and is an experienced supervisor of doctoral theses. To borrow the words of William Zartman, the Jacob Blaustein Distinguished Professor at The Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Rosoux is ‘the ultimate authority in Europe on reconciliation’, a field of research she was instrumental in developing and to which she has contributed immensely, first with the publication of her doctoral thesis, and since then with many groundbreaking publications and presentations.

Email: valerie.rosoux@uclouvain.be

Max Planck Fellow Group

The Intergenerational Memory of Mass Atrocities: The Missing Piece of Transitional Justice and Alternative Dispute Resolution

A multidisciplinary exploration of the importance of recognising and addressing the memory of violence in post conflict transitional justice and peacebuilding efforts.

The research project has a three-pronged approach. The first is disciplinary. The project involves an approach combining three central disciplines, namely law, anthropology and political science. Only by bringing together expertise in these three disciplines is it possible to identify phenomena relating to procedures and ‘judicial truth’ (the field of law), the use of memory (political science), as well as transmission, rituals and collective mourning (anthropology).

The second angle is temporal. It aims to scale up the number of people involved. Rather than restricting itself to studying one generation of actors, this project considers two, or even three, generations within each family studied (among the various meso levels). The family remains one of the most important places for an in-depth understanding of the intergenerational phenomenon. It might seem a demanding task, but it is a condition sine qua non to identify the tensions, discrepancies and even contradictions between one generation and another.

The third angle focuses on the geographical variable (space). The project will study the intergenerational effect on the memory of the narratives highlighted by courts and other transitional  justice  bodies set  up  after  a war, based  on  the  geographical  anchoring of the families studied. Each case study will systematically compare families remaining in the country of violence and families living in the diaspora.

The Max Planck Law Fellow Group is headed by Professor Valérie Rosoux and brings together researchers from  and under the direction of Professors Hélène Ruiz Fabri and Marie-Claire Foblets.