Argentina | Book launch and discussion

The book, published by the Elisabeth Käsemann Foundation with seven authors, documents the stories of ten men and women who campaigned in different ways for a revolutionary break-up of the prevailing structures of injustice in Argentina during the civil-military dictatorship. This cost them their lives; they were all killed in the secret detention and torture camp El Vesubio, which was one of the most notorious and brutal camps of the Argentine dictatorship. You can buy the book here.

Reading from the book „Disappeared and murdered. European victims of the secret detention and torture camp El Vesubio in Argentina“ with the author Dorothee Weitbrecht (Managing Director of the Elisabeth Käsemann Foundation, Stuttgart) followed by a discussion between Dorothee Weitbrecht and Valeria Vegh Weis

Dr Dorothee Weitbrecht is a historian specialising in international dictatorship/conflict research and social movements as well as founder and managing director of the Elisabeth Käsemann Foundation, which promotes intercultural dialogue between Germany, Latin America and Spain on an academic, political and cultural level. She is the niece of Elisabeth Käsemann, who was murdered by the Argentinian military.

Valeria Vegh Weis, LL.M., PhD, is Argentinian and teaches Criminology and Transitional Justice at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and the National University of Quilmes (Argentina). She is currently a Research Fellow at the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz, where she is researching the role of human rights and victims‘ organisations in dealing with state crimes. From 2019 to 2021, Vegh Weis was an Alexander von Humboldt Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Free University of Berlin, where she continues to teach State Crime Criminology.

She holds a PhD in Law and an LL.M. in Criminal Law from UBA and an LL.M. in International Legal Studies from New York University. She has received several scholarships, including the Fulbright Scholarship and the Hauser Global Scholarship. Her book Marxism and Criminology: A History of Criminal Selectivity (BRILL 2017, Haymarket Books 2018) was honoured with the Choice Award by the American Library Association and the Outstanding Book Award by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. She is also co-author of Bienvenidos al Lawfare with Raúl Zaffaroni and Cristina Caamaño (in Spanish Capital Intelectual 2020, in Portuguese Tirant Le Blanch 2021, in English Brill 2023) and Criminalisation of Activism (Routledge 2021), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on criminology, transitional justice and criminal law. She has fifteen years of experience working with criminal courts and international organisations and is the recipient of the American Society of Criminology DCCSJ Critical Criminology of the Year Award (2021).

Welcome: Dr Irmtrud Wojak (Fritz Bauer Forum, Bochum)