Congo CONGres

Hello! My name is Aika. Alongside Amber, I am in charge of reaching out to potential speakers for CONGres 2025 and being their contact point for information. As we plan to invite interesting speakers, we hope to see you there at the congress!

Hi, I am Sili! I’m the treasurer of this year. In this role, I have the opportunity to oversee all the financial aspects that happen behind the scenes of a congress. I’m really looking forward to this year’s CONGres and hope to see you there!

Hi!! My name is Sanne and I’m the vice chair of the CONGres this year✨

I’ll be helping Lora, our chair, whenever it’s needed. Since I am the former chair, I can guide her and give her advise based on last year. I’m very much looking forward to the CONGres and am very excited to see what this amazing committee will achieve!

We are excited to announce our last parallel speaker: Mr. Richard Gerding!
Richard Gerding is currently a senior lecturer at the criminal department in the faculty of law of the University of Amsterdam. Before, he was a high court judge in Amsterdam and public prosecutor in Rotterdam. He published on subjects relating to fraud against the interest of the European Union.

Mr. Richard Gerding will talk about the possibilities and pitfalls of criminal law science. In his lecture he will focus on the report of evidence. Is there enough evidence to incriminate someone? Those who watch the show CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) may get the impression that gathering scientific evidence suffices to solve every possible crime. In real life, solving crimes and finding suspects isn’t that easy. Moreover, if a case is brought to court, the judge must decide whether or not there is enough evidence to convict the suspect. When interpreting scientific evidence, the judge has to rely on experts. The Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI), together with the police, plays a very important role in gathering and interpreting forensic evidence. It has experts in almost every field e.g. biology (DNA), toxicology (Drugs) and computer science (breaking the codes of crypto phones). Therefore, the reports of the NFI are widely used in the day-to-day routine of the Netherlands criminal court. At the same time the judge must remain critical in interpreting the evidence that is brought before him. During his lecture he will provide challenges with concrete real-life examples for the audience and invite the students to give their decision as if they were the judge.

We want to thank for sponsoring the congres this year.

We hereby announce our second parallel speaker: Dr. Thomas Nys! 
Thomas Nys teaches Ethics and Political Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. He mainly writes about autonomy and manipulation and recently translated (together with Henri Wijsbek) the book Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill.

Thomas Nys will talk about Michel Foucault’s vision on the Panopticon prison design: The world, a prison?
In the late nineteenth century, Jeremy Bentham developed a revolutionary prison design that he called the Panopticon. This building would allow for a system detention that would focus less on physical violence and punishment, but rather on peaceful supervision and control. The idea of a "panopticon" became popularized through Michel Foucault's analysis in his 1975 Surveillir et Punir. According to Foucault, Bentham’s prison would symbolize a far more general transition from a punitive to a disciplinary exercise of power. People would be ‘disciplined’ in school, armies, hospitals, and even in their sexuality and 9-to-5 jobs. Where power was once visible and palpable, it would now go almost unnoticed and be hidden in the structuring and shaping aspects of all kinds of (often liberal) institutions. The panopticon became a metaphor for society in which 'free citizens' - people who imagine themselves free - would imperceptibly 'fall in line' with the Government or Big Money. During his talk, Thomas Nys will to return to Bentham's radical project in order to see if the audience can get past Foucault as well.

We want to thank for sponsoring the congres this year.