Brigitte Herremans

Short Bio:

Brigitte Herremans is a FWO postdoctoral researcher at Justice Visions and a research fellow at GrounDoc. Her current research project examines how informal documentation efforts, including artistic practices, advance the pursuit of justice related to enforced disappearance in Syria. More broadly, her research looks into the relation between arts and justice in the Syrian and Palestinian contexts and explores the potential of artistic practices to counter the erasure and invisibilisation of injustices.

In her doctoral research project, Brigitte investigated the potential of artistic practices to ‘open up’ the justice imagination in the Syrian context. Brigitte studied Eastern Languages and Cultures at Ghent University and International Relations at l’Université Libre de Bruxelles.

Featured Publications:

• Herremans, B., & Destrooper, T. (2025). Visibilizing the accountability web: ordinary courts, informal justice efforts, and alternative approaches for addressing mass human rights violations in Syria. Journal of Law and Society.
• Herremans, B., & Ghoutouk, L. (2025). Presencing the disappeared in Syria. Journal of Human Rights Practice, 17(3).
• Barakeh, K., Herremans, B., McManus, A.-M., & Namer, G. (2025). Presenting absence : a conversation, Berlin, March 2022. Third Text, 1–17.
• Herremans, B. (2025). Literary Writing in Syria : Challenging the Erasure and Invisibilisation of Violence through Literature. In T. Tunali, J. Wessels (Eds.), Art against Authoritarianism in Southwest Asia and North Africa, edited by T, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025, pp. 262–86.
• Herremans, B. (2023). Countering erasure and invisibilisation : the potential of literature to open up the justice imagination in the Syrian context. Ghent University. Faculty of Law and Criminology, Ghent.
• Herremans, B., & Bellintani, V. (2023). Overcoming the justice impasse in Syria. In T. Destrooper, L. E. Gissel, & K. B. Carlson (Eds.), Transitional justice in aparadigmatic contexts : accountability, recognition and disruption.
• Herremans, B., & Destrooper, T. (2023). Moving beyond formal truth practices and forensic truth in the Syrian conflict : how informal truth practices contribute to thicker understandings of truth, Journal of Social and Legal Studies.
• Herremans, B., & Destrooper, T. (2021). Stirring the justice imagination : countering the invisibilization and erasure of Syrian victims’ justice narratives, International Journal of Transitional Justice.