In the last two decades of the 20th century, reckoning with the past has emerged as a compelling paradigm of international relations and domestic politics. There seems to be global agreement that dealing with the past is a chief requirement for peaceful relations between states as well as successful democratization in societies undergoing political transitions. With the dynamic expansion of the field of transitional justice, however, expertise in accounting of the past has been exposed to profound change. The domains of specialized knowledge have multiplied and, as a result, specialists from a wide variety of academic disciplines engage in the planning and implementation of transitional justice instruments. They do so in diverse functions, some of which are not considered part of their conventional competences.

Dealing with the past, therefore, has become an area of intensive academic knowledge production. The demand of decision makers for such knowledge is growing steadily. It ranges from highly specialized technical know-how to political consulting and the critical assessment of the achieved results. This development has stimulated the emergence of an expert community with its own tendency to institutionalization. At the same time, many of those experts have become global players in the field of transitional justice. They engage in the design, dissemination and implementation of methods and instruments for dealing with the past. This is a process that depends on knowledge transfer, the translation and universalization of norms and their adoption in local contexts. Significant developments in the field, therefore, cannot be understood without reflecting on the role of experts.

The conference will direct attention to the crucial role of experts and expert knowledge in processes of dealing with the past. For that purpose, it brings together academics from various disciplines and distinguished experts drawing from several decades of experience in dealing with the past. How experts grapple with the tensions between their commitment to critical analysis and their engagement in the active promotion of specific policies, will be one of the central issues of this conference. Papers will also address aspects relating to the social constitution of experts, the relationship between historical knowledge and dealing with the past, the significance of experts in the international dissemination and institutionalization of specific approaches, and the consequences of globalization for public accounting of the past.

http://www.cgs.unibe.ch/content/konferenzen_workshops/expertinnen_und_vergangenheitspolitik/index_ger.html