The Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies organises the DOING GENDER Lecture Series in cooperation with her partners. These lectures stress the importance of doing gender work combined with an active involvement in the practice of gender theory and research. The concept of DOING GENDER supports a hands-on approach to gender issues in the sense of social and political engagement with the new forms of gender inequalities that are taking shape in the world today. The lecture series wants to give space to the new generations of gender theorists and practitioners and to perspectives that innovate the field and do gender in new ways. Key is the notion of doing gender: what is the state of the art definition of gender? How do contemporary scholars and activists utilise this definition?

On Monday, February 2, 2026  prof. Brenna Bhandar will give a Doing Gender Lecture entitled Pre-Emptive Legal Violence.

The Doing Gender Lecture series for 2025-2026 will be framed around the theme of Feminist Solidarity in Times of War.

Lecture: Pre-Emptive Legal Violence.

In this talk, prof. Bhandar explores pre-emptive violence as a legal technology used to foreclose alternate futures from taking hold. Pre-emptive violence appears across land law doctrines from the 19th century settler colony to the criminalization of anti-colonial resistance, and permeates the globalized racial present of counter-terrorism and securitization. Pre-emptive violence is a key mechanism to control the political time of refusal and resistance.

Biography

Brenna Bhandar is Professor in Law at the University of British Columbia, situated on the unceded lands of the Musqueam First Nation. She is author of Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land and Racial Regimes of Ownership (DUP: 2018), and co-editor, with Rafeef Ziadah, of Revolutionary Feminisms: Conversations on Collective Action and Radical Thought (Verso: 2020).

Doing Gender Lecture by prof. Brenna Bhandar

Monday, February 2, 2026
Lecture: Pre-Emptive Legal Violence

Time: 17:15 – 18:45 hrs.
Location: TBA.
Chair: Jamila Mascat
Registration: nog@uu.nl. Please register by using ‘Registration Doing Gender Lecture Bhandar’ as the subject line.
Reading and Preparation: