Nergis Canefe

Professor Nergis Canefe is a scholar trained in the fields of Political Philosophy, Forced Migration Studies and International Public Law with special focus on Human Rights Law, War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, and Mass Violence. She has over twenty years of experience in carrying out in-depth qualitative research with displaced communities and teaching human rights globally. Her research experience includes working with the Muslim and Jewish Diasporas in Europe and North America, refugees and displaced peoples in Turkey, Cyprus, India, Uganda, South Africa, Bosnia and Colombia. She is the Vice President of IASFM (2021-2022) and a member of the executive board since 2017. She co-edits the Journal of Conflict Transformation and Security with Professor Alp Ozerdem, Dean of Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, George Mason University. She was the Associate Director of the Center for Refugee Studies, York University between 2008-2013 and oversaw the Center's educational programs and certificate/diploma requirements. She is also an advisory board member at the Royal Roads University Faculty of Graduate Studies, Canada.

In the field of legal studies, she specializes in international criminal law, with particular emphasis on crimes against humanity, accountability for atrocities committed by states against their own peoples, critical approaches to citizenship, and transitional justice. Dr. Canefe joined York University in 2003 and has been a full-time faculty member regularly teaching at departments of Political Science, Social and Political Thought, Socio-Legal Studies, Public Policy, Administration and Law at both undergraduate and graduate levels. She also worked at London School of Economics, UK , Shanghai University, China, Bilgi University and Bogazici University, Turkey as a faculty member.

In the field of social and political theory, Dr. Canefe published widely in the following areas: theories of nationalism in the Global South, organized violence, mass murder, societal amnesia, forced migration and post-colonial state formations in the Middle East, Muslim and Jewish diasporas in the West, and, minority rights and statelessness. She has done extensive fieldwork on the role of political violence and forced migration in post-imperial nation-state formation and capital accumulation in the Middle East. Her research has been funded by international and Canadian organizations. She also regularly conducts her human rights, minority rights, and refugee rights-related work on a pro bono basis. She acted as an expert witness and public lecturer on subjects related to forced migration, diasporas in exile, minority rights, and genocide in international and Canadian media, Canadian courts, and Canadian and Turkish public service. She has over 100 scholarly articles and several books, including Limits of Universal Jurisdiction: Crimes Against Humanity Redefined (2021, University of Wales International Law Series), The Syrian Exodus in Context (2018, Bilgi University International Law and Migration Series), Transitional Justice and Forced Migration (2019, Cambridge University Press) The Jewish Diaspora as a Paradigm: Politics, Religion and Belonging (2014, Libra Press –Jewish Studies Series), Milliyetcilik, Kimlik ve Aidiyet (2006, Nationalism, Identity and Belonging], Istanbul: Bilgi University Publishing House), and Turkey and European Integration: Accession Prospects and Issues (2004, in collaboration with Mehmet Ugur, Routledge). Her scholarly articles appeared in Nations and Nationalism, Citizenship Studies, New Perspectives, Refugee Watch, Refuge, South East European Studies, Peace Review, Middle Eastern Law and Governance, Globalizations, Narrative Politics, International Journal of Human Rights, etc. She is also a mural painter and visual artist who often designs her own book covers.

Supervisors: Howard Adelman (PhD), Obiora Okafor (SJD)

My work explores issues related to the critical relationship between crimes of the state/state criminality, mass political violence, societal trauma, memory, remembrance/amnesia, historical injustices, mass dispossession, redefining transitional justice, accountability regimes, and, possibilities of societal responsibility for collective forms of violence. The sum total of these themes creates a nexus that allows approaching mass violence and dispossession from a uniquely composite vantage point. I produce work on multiple aspects of the same type of phenomenon and reveal the relational qualities of these aforementioned aspects which are traditionally studied by separate disciplines or genres of scholarly work.

My research and publications in the 1990-2010 period largely theorize how states in South East Europe and the Middle East use mass exodus, forced migration and planned resettlement not only to establish control over contested frontiers but also to encourage disproportionate public participation in violence to defend the incumbent regime. The question of how to understand participation in state-sponsored violence and denial of collective responsibility for societal wrong-doing, continues to be central to my legal scholarship produced during the last decade, albeit this time my concentration is on institutional forms of the coding and decoding of these events.

Political violence leaves a lasting legacy not only on the targeted groups and expelled communities but also on the society as a whole. Furthermore, state-sponsored violence shapes the identities of victims and communities transmit these deep-seated effects across generations.