Prof. Stephan Parmentier (April 2011)

On the 15th and 16th of April 2011 prof. Stephan Parmentier will visit ACIC. Stephan Parmentier (1960) studied law and sociology at the K.U. Leuven (Belgium) and sociology and conflict resolution at the Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (U.S.A.). He currently teaches sociology of crime, law, and human rights at the Faculty of Law of the K.U. Leuven, and has served as the head of the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology (2005-2009). In July 2010 he was appointed Secretary-General of the International Society of Criminology and he also serves as a Board member of the Oxford Centre for Criminology and the International Institute for Sociology of Law. He has been a visiting professor at the International Institute for Sociology of Law in Oñati (Spain), the University for Peace (San José, Costa Rica) and the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia), and a visiting scholar at the universities of Stellenbosch (South Africa), Oxford (U.K.) and New South Wales (Sydney, Australia). Stephan Parmentier was the editor-in-chief of the Flemish Yearbook on Human Rights and is currently the co-general editor of the new international book Series on Transitional Justice. He has served as an advisor to the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, the Belgian Minister of the Interior, the King Baudouin Foundation, and Amnesty International. His research interests include political crimes, transitional justice and human rights, and the administration of criminal justice. Between 1999-2002 he served as the vice-president of the Flemish section of Amnesty International.

Stephan Parmentier will give our students a two day research seminar. In this seminar, we will look into various ways of dealing with violent crimes and with the consequences of mass violence in a post-conflict situations. Its major aim is to broaden the perspective of dealing with such crimes, from a retributive approach with a prime focus on punishing the offender(s), to a restorative approach with more attention to victims and communities and to building new relationships. Along the way, it will also discuss the contribution of criminology to situations of international crimes and mass victimization.

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