Let the summer begin!

Rediscovering the work and spirit of Hafiz.

UN chief Antonio Guterres puts both countries ‘on notice’ over documented pattern of sexual violence.

Adriennne Rich’s poem ‘Rape’ remains as haunting and relevant as ever.

Excellent analysis by @kristoftiteca.bsky.social on the new peace deal between DRC and Rwanda negotiated by the US. “Peace is not a real estate transaction.”

Brilliant piece by Elizabeth Strakosch, Natalie Ironfield, & Shillan Shelby on Unimelb’s racist, harmful ‘anti-racist’ politics. overland.org.au/2025/06/rebr...

Our article in Review of International Studies, I wrote with @charlottemertens.bsky.social, now has a 'home' issue 😍 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

An Indigenous Theory of Water: @biidaasamose.bsky.social on Rivers as Teachers

People in Bukavu keep telling me about daily targeted arrests, about gunshots and killings every night. They are living in a ‘psychose totale’. Unlivable.

📄𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗣𝗨𝗕𝗟𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 by @judithverweijen.bsky.social, @kvlassen.bsky.social & Godefroid Muzalia ““We Are Caught Between Violence and Famine” – Analysis of the Deepening Crisis Affecting Eastern DR Congo” #DRC 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 👉 bit.ly/3FLayRl

'It starts from a premise which assumes there is such a thing as masculinity and that the answer to gendered problems in society, problems that affect all of us, is more and better gender, or gender done differently; rather than not at all' Serious food for thought

Sharpe’s voice will stay with me for a long time @hystericalblkns.bsky.social Ordinary Notes finds beauty despite living under brutal and violent regimes of anti-blackness. What an achievement. Read it.

“Every day you wake up and there’s something trying to break your heart.” Dionne Brand.

Istanbul protest image destined for book covers 📸 Ümit Bektaş, @reuters.com

Now more than ever we need to read bell hooks’ timeless book. And implement it. And throw it in university leaders’ faces and never forget the power we have as educators. ✊🏾

New UN report shows "Israel has increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence ... and carried out genocidal acts through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities" www.ohchr.org/en/press-rel...

I feel this is only the beginning.

Whoever described generative AI as the aesthetic of fascism made a sharp point.

Anxiety rises in DRC capital Kinshasa as M23 rebels advance in east. Some residents are looking to move their families abroad amid open talk of a coup. Some members of Congo's fractious opposition are openly predicting Tshisekedi will not last.

Les archives sont porteuses de la violence du passé colonial mais aussi d’une potentielle postérité anticoloniale, à condition d’être radicalement réorganisées autour d’une exigence de justice et d’accessibilité, expliquent @charlottemertens.bsky.social et @stephanieperazzone.bsky.social 👇

My heart is in Bukavu. 30 years of cycles of violence. Courage and strength to the people of Bukavu ❤️

REPORTER: Are you policing yourself for conflicts of interest? What are the checks and balances? MUSK: We post our actions to the DOGE handle on X

That this even went to trial is insane. The cop called her ‘little missy’, she called him ‘white and stupid’.

The United States and Israel are openly pushing their plan to ethnically cleanse Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Thinking about Afrikaners (smh) but actually thinking about the white American insistence on framing the post-colonial white settler as perpetually imperiled in stark opposition to their material and political economic conditions/realities. The foundational anxiety of the settler international.

Butler: ‘If we continue to be gripped with outrage and stilled by stupefaction by each day’s new proclamation, we will fail to discern what links them. To be gripped by his statements is precisely the aim of their utterance.’

"When people deny our stories, they're denying my truth. They're denying my abuses that I experienced." Rejecting the full history of Canada's residential schools and the harms Indigenous children faced is a form of hate, say survivors ⤵️

Grateful to @OverlandJournal for publishing my piece on Unimelb’s response to last year’s Gaza encampment. None of the University’s reconciliatory gestures (land acknowledgements, Indigenous strategies etc) have any meaning if we cannot speak about Palestine.

We have been censored in the US for our research on LGBTQ+ sexual violence. My co-authors and I are extremely concerned about research and activism being censored and the speed with which organisations have acquiesced to transphobic, homophobic and misogynist demands.

"Refusing the University’s erasure of Palestine involves a collective effort in thinking on how we will teach Palestine [and] the ongoing settler colonial violence" @charlottemertens.bsky.social on teaching Palestine on stolen Indigenous lands.

@charlottemertens.bsky.social and I just published an essay with Africa is a Country that summarizes our article published with @risjnl.bsky.social a few months back. It looks at the Belgian Congo's archives to make sense of the political and structural violence still found in contemporary #DRC.

New piece with @kvlassen.bsky.social on the escalating Congo crisis

excellent article qui attire l'attention sur la coopération militaire contestée de la France www.mediapart.fr/journal/inte...

The wretched of the earth ready to wreck the earth

Scorched earth tactics. Billions of dollars spent to completely destroy land and infrastructure. But the people will never be defeated. #FreePalestine

Our paper on the structural nature of DFV now has a home. Drawing on research with the Federation of Community Legal Centres in Australia, we argue that a distinction needs to be made between what is genuinely structural change and what is system reform. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

'Soul of my soul'. Khaled Nabhan grieved peacefully for his granddaughter Reem last year. On Monday, Israel killed him in Gaza, too

It took me way too long, but my book 'Fractured Pasts in Lake Kivu's Borderlands' will finally be out next year with CUP. You can preorder it here. www.cambridge.org/core/books/f... And it's hard to believe, but wonderful scholars called it 'bold', 'provocative', 'original' and 'essential reading'.

In the belgian Congo mixed race children were stolen from their families, discriminated against and villified. Five women - all in their 70s now - took the Belgian state to court which found the state guilty of a crime against humanity (systematic kidnapping) www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/202...

Teffera, Human Rights Watch researcher, describes the ruling as “a historic win because it recognises the obligation of European governments in addressing their legacies of colonialism”. It sets an important legal precedent and may lead to further reparations www.theafricareport.com/370402/activ...

Historic judgement as the Belgian state has been found guilty of crimes against humanity for the forced removal of five mixed-race children from their mothers in colonial Congo. www.theguardian.com/world/2024/d...

More than 70 years after being taken away from her mother, Bitu Bingi, and four other women have accused Belgium of crimes against humanity for their forced removal and placement in religious institutions. Hope justice prevails.

The struggle of imperial leaders to conceive that the ICC might issue arrest warrants against them is something to behold. www.reuters.com/world/france...

This is hilarious.

On the state of Belgium’s colonial archives. Leopold II’s private administrative papers, brick walls in a Walloon castle and the Goffinet brothers.

At least she waited until the puzzle was almost finished.