In this special keynote assembly Eyal Weizman investigates links between violence, conflict, and the environment. As director of the research agency Forensic Architecture (FA), he and his team of interdisciplinary researchers document acts of state crimes and human rights violations around the world, producing evidence for a variety of forums, including work since 2023 for the South African legal team in the genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice.
In this talk we learn how Forensic Architecture is pushing forward a new academic and multidisciplinary field – devising modes of open-source, citizen-led evidence gathering and analysis, reshaping the fields of architecture, art, human rights, journalism, and aesthetics. This keynote talk reflects on FA’s key concept and practice of ‘situated testimony’, drawing on research for recent publications, ‘Ungrounding’ (2026), ‘Investigative Aesthetics’ (2021) and ‘Hollow Land’ (2013/2024).
In his newest book ‘Ungrounding’, Weizman examines Gaza’s ‘deep cartography’, from subterranean tunnels and militarised topography to its unique soil, settlements, and barriers. Placing Israeli violence in historical context from the 1948 Nakba today, Weizman argues that spatial and architectural analysis reveal the relationship between the colonised and coloniser, highlighting how patterns of control have escalated to genocide. This latest work is deeply informative and profoundly affecting in its scope and precision, providing the world with a rallying cry for the liberation of Palestine and the future of peace.
Chaired by Jim Roche (TU Dublin) and contributions by others, the event includes the book launch for ‘Ungrounding’ (2026). Book copies will be available to purchase on the evening and refreshments.
Programmed as part of the IMMA Symposium Technologies of Peace, in partnership with the School of Architecture, Building and Environment, TU Dublin, NCAD, the Dublin Colleges Branch of the TUI and Academia for Palestine (AfP).
