Writing

Writing in accessible language without giving in on the complexities of violence and crime for the people who are (in)directly involved in these practices is Eva’s ultimate goal. The aim of writing fiction is also part of her wish to engage with wider audiences. You can find a full list of publications on Research Gate

Phenomenal Justice
Violence and Morality in Argentina

Writing_Monograph_Evavanroekel

How do victims and perpetrators of political violence caught up in a complicated legal battle experience justice on their own terms? Phenomenal Justice is a compelling ethnography about the reopened trials for crimes against humanity committed during the brutal military dictatorship that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983. 

 

The monograph Phenomenal Justice. Violence and Morality in Argentina received the international award Outstanding Academic Title 2020 and was shortlisted for the Juan E. Mendez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America.

“Eva van Roekel’s riveting account of the prolonged search for truth and reconciliation in the wake of Argentina’s Military Dictatorship sheds new light on the vexed relationships between political, legal, moral, ritual, and emotional processes of recovering from trauma or arriving at a point where justice is felt to have been done.” –-Michael D. Jackson, author of ‘The Politics of Storytelling’
“Insightful and engaging, Phenomenal Justice makes an important contribution to the anthropology of emotion and to understanding the ways that feelings and structural factors shape the lived experience of justice. This is an impressive piece of work.” Karen Faulk, co-editor of ‘A Sense of Justice: Legal Knowledge and Lived Experience in Latin America’

LATEST Publications

Deep ethnography: Violence and words in Argentina
van Roekel, E. 2023. In: American Ethnologist 

Muddled Times: Temporality and Gold Mining in Colombia and Venezuela

Jonkman, J. & van Roekel, E. 2023. In: International Development Policy

FICTION

Fiction is an imaginative practice in which Eva explores alternative ways of conveying the affective and the magical that arise from ethnographic encounters and personal memories while living in Latin America. The Watermelon and Cherry Blossoms and Grilled Lamb are short stories about the different ways of mourning in Venezuela and Argentina. She recently published a new short story titled Blue Morpho about a Venezuelan woman who is trapped in the South of Venezuela where grief, gold, and blue butterflies rule. Vultures is a new poem co-authored with Matias Cordiviola about doing fieldwork in Venezuela with family present.