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The Conceptualizing Ecocide Conference will take place from 1–3 October 2025 at Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ. This interdisciplinary conference brings together scholars, practitioners, activists, and policymakers to critically explore and advance the emerging concept of ecocide. Across keynote addresses, panels, and roundtables, we will examine ecocide from legal, political, pilosophical, artistic and pedagogical perspectives. 

The in-person registration for the conference has closed. You can attend online by registering at the bottom of this page.

Day 1 (1 October) will host a roundtable on Ecocide in the Classroom and an evening event with a screening plus live performance of parts of "This is not a Trial" followed by a reception at a bar nearby. 

• The roundtable will by chaired by Tina Venema and feature:
  • Misan Afinotan, Miracle Uche, Tom Baycock, and Prof. Caroline Keenan on Ecocide in the Classroom: Pedagogical Theory and Practice
  • Anna Melnyk & Andrea Gammon on Technological Disruption, Engineering Education and Ecocide: Rethinking Western Ontologies
  • Cedric Ryngaert, Mohana Jasmijn Zwaga, and Ashleigh Mulder to talk about their experience on the play This is Not a Trial.
     
• The live performance is specifically designed for this evening by our partner Pollif Projects: artists Tim Hammer and Mirthe Doker, Artistic Fieldwork for Science and Society. It will also feature Emma Zuiderveen: scientist, writer, and poet.
   

Day 2 (2 October) hosts panels on Rethinking Harm in the Anthropocene, Legal Architectures of Ecocide, and The Politics of Ecocide, with keynotes by Damien Short and Julia Suárez-Krabbe.

• Damien Short will deliver his keynote on The Social Construction of Ecocide Law
   
• The panel on Rethinking Harm in the Anthropocene will be chaired by Luigi Prosperi and will feature:
  • Merle Kooijman with Making Sense of Ecocide in the Anthropocene – A Relational Ethics of Entanglement and Serious Environmental Harm
  • Yogi Hendlin with Ecocide as Semiocide: A Dutch PFAS Case of Systematic Loss of Nature as an Unraveling of Human Meaning
  • Isik Girgic with Why Ecocide demands an Earth system law response in the Anthropocene: the case of the global plastic waste trade
  • Kellie Toole with What is the Crime of Environmental Crime? 
     
• The panel on Legal Architectures of Ecocide will be chaired by Cedric Ryngaert and will feature:
  • Sjoerd Lopik with Ecocide and Climate Change: Can Criminal Law address GHG emission
  • Matthew Gillett with The Legality of Ecocide
  • Giovanna Maria Frisso with International disaster law potential contributions to the discussion of ecocide
  • Catherine Savard with ‘What Mens Rea for Ecocide in the Rome Statute'  
     
• Julia Suárez-Krabbe will deliver her keynote on On Mother Earth and Liberation
   
• The panel on The Politics of Ecocide will be chaired by Daan van Uhm and will feature:
  • Santosh Anand with Political Economy of Criminalizing Ecocide: A TWAIL Critique
  • Peter Stoett & Delon Omrow with Conceptualizing Ecopoliticide: An Explorative Typology
  • Judith Alkema with Ecocide, Environmental Justice and Legality
  • Babs Verhoeve & Fernanda Poblete with Extractive Ecocide and the EU Green Transition 

Day 3 (3 October) includes panels on case studies of Ecocide on the frontlines and more-than-human and decolonial perspectives, and another panel on Pluralizing the Impacts of Ecocide with keynotes by Radha D’Souza as well as Practicioners Rountables on Ecocide Law in the Making and Evidence, Imagery, and Investigation 

• The panel on Ecocide on the frontlines and more-than-human and decolonial perspectives will be chaired by Carolina Sánchez-Jaegher and will feature:
  • Dat Nguyen, Roos de Kraker, & Imogen Alessio with Grappling with Ecocide from the Margin: The Case of Agent Orange in Laos and Cambodia
  • Luiza Campos Rocha with The Yanomami Indigenous Crisis – a Case of Ecocide
  • Cristóbal Emilfork (Marcelo Astorga & Elías Barticevic) with Chilean Patagonia‘s Antarctic and sub-Antarctic ecosystems
  • Rinata Kazak with (Re)framing of ecocide: evolution of media coverage in the context of Vietnam war
     
• The panel on Pluralizing the Impacts of Ecocide will be chaired by Susanne Knittel and will feature:
  • Deniz Gündogan Ibrisim with Fictional Shores: Ecocide and the Memory of the Mediterranean
  • Ifor Duncan with Conceptualising Ecocide, the Hidroituango Megadam, and the declaration of the Cauca River as a Victim of Political Violence in Colombia.
  • Wietske Merison with Ecocide as Epistemicide: Islamic Perspectives on Ecological Destruction and Crime
  • Lina Paola Garzon, Carolina Sánchez, & Olga Chaparro with Linguicide as a dimension of ecocide: language revitalisation and eco-health among Indigenous peoples of the Colombian Amazon 
     
• Radha D'Souza will deliver her keynote on Ecocide, Genocide, Juriscide?: Learning Law from History
   
• The roundtable on Ecocide Law in the Making will by chaired by Cedric Ryngaert and will feature:
  • Lammert van Raan with Manual for the Implementation of Ecocide Law
  • Jérôme de Hemptinne with Review of the Manual
  • Kate Mackintosh with Ecocide Law Advisory
     
• The roundtable on Evidence, Imagery, and Investigation will be chaired by Ana Hatzius-Sarramona and will feature:
  • Thijs Jeursen, Jonathan Vince, & Liam Beechouk with Ecocide and Satellite Imagery in War
  • Murtaza Mohiqi with Digitizing Accountability 
  • Agata Nguyen Chuong & Omar Ferwati with Bush Encroachment: Ongoing Ecocide and Genocide in Namibia 
  • Ingeborg Koopmans as a Dutch Prosecutor for environmental crime  
  • Anamika Gode from Greenpeace Netherlands