Louise Wise

Dr Louise Wise

Small Group Project 2022

From Colonialism to COVID: Reimagining and Decolonising the Law on Genocide from the Perspective of Brazil’s Indigenous Groups

The COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil represents an existential threat for indigenous groups; but the current moment can also be seen as an acceleration of deep historical processes of group destruction with long-term colonial roots. Last year, lawyers made a submission to the International Criminal Court (ICC) calling for Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, to be investigated for genocide. A few months later, civil society groups sounded the genocide alarm again as COVID-19 spread through vulnerable indigenous communities. Inspired by the recent submission to the ICC, this project is also cognisant of the limitations, systemic blindness and colonial roots of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention (UNGC), within which the former is framed. The UNGC embodies silences and biases which undermine the possibility of viewing colonial, structural and attritional forms of group destruction as genocide. The project thus starts from an assumption that existing law on genocide must be reimagined and decolonised — this challenging conceptual task is its primary focus.

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Areas of interest

Genocide International Security Sudan Complexity Theory

Cohort

FG7

Biography

Louise joined the University of Sussex in September 2017, having spent the previous two years based at the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) at Queen Mary University of London. She completed her PhD at the War Studies Department, King’s College London. Her thesis developed a new interpretation of genocide in Sudan drawing on complexity theory, and Claudia Card’s concept of ‘social death’. It uncovered the multiple intersecting colonial dynamics underpinning genocide in the country, and involved extensive interviews with diaspora communities from Darfur and the Nuba Mountains. She has previously worked as a Teaching Assistant in the Departments of War Studies and Political Economy at King’s College London, and as a Campaign and Research Assistant at Crisis Action, New York.

She has a BA (Hons) in Philosophy and Psychology from Warwick University, and an MA in International Conflict Studies from King’s College London. She is currently the Chair of the Paper Awards Committee for the Theory Section of the International Studies Association (ISA). In 2017, she was recipient of the ISA Theory Section’s ‘Best Paper’ prize. Louise is Associate Editor of ISCI’s journal, State Crime. Her book, a critical reinterpretation of genocide in Sudan, is forthcoming with Routledge.

Biographical details correct as of 24.04.26