10th Anniversary of STR's Annual Postgraduate Conference: Current Themes in the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence

Session

State Terror and Political Violence: Visibility, Resistance, and Contestation

4B

29 May 2026, 16:00

4.07 (Williamson Building)

17. State Terror in West Papua: Slow-Motion Genocide, Ecocide, Ethnocide, and the Politics of Invisibility

Putri Kristimanta (Department of Politics, The University of Manchester)

29/05/2026, 16:00

Paper

This presentation examines the intensifying regime of state terrorism in West Papua under Indonesian rule, not simply as counter-insurgency but as a sustained assault on Indigenous Papuans and their environment. It argues that violence in Papua is not limited to isolated abuses, but forms part of an ongoing and cumulative regime of destruction operating through extrajudicial killings, torture,...

38. How to make slow violence visible

Katarina Kemp (University of Manchester)

29/05/2026, 16:15

Paper

This paper analyses how slow violence (ecocide, urbicide and the use of White Phosphorus), is framed by the media. The NGOisation of humanitarian aid and conflict, structurally results in media strategies that prioritise visible and emotionally shocking violence. This paper argues that slow violence is structurally misrepresented because it lacks the spectacle required by affective media...

35. Contesting Drone Warfare in Counterterrorism as a Non-State Actor: the Alignment Model on Offsetting Risks to the Antipreneurial Advantage

Jana-Christina von Dessien

29/05/2026, 16:30

Paper

The normalization of US drone strikes in counterterrorism challenges the assumption of an advantage of the actors who defend traditional interpretations of jus ad bellum and IHL norms. This study conceptualizes actor status and governance level of norms as risk factors to the antipreneurial advantage and probes their plausibility in an analysis of framing activities by the ICRC, the ACLU and...