Opening Address by Kivland at Violence Against Difference Conference

A collection of evening activities on Friday, Nov. 4, including a reception and a student poster session highlighting research on human rights, will kick off the annual Physicians for Human Rights Student Conference being held at the Geisel School of Medicine on Nov. 5. The topic of this year’s conference is Violence Against Difference.

Saturday’s opening address on structural violence, by Assistant Professor of Anthropology Chelsey Kivland, opens the day of discussions and breakout sessions. Structural violence, as opposed to behavioral violence, refers to the subtle and often invisible ways in which social structures can harm or cause disadvantage to people. The concepts set forth by Kivland will be interwoven throughout the day’s presentations and discussions.

The conference organizers, second-year Geisel medical students Emily Georges ’19 and Thomas Kuczmarski ’19, are members of the Physicians for Human Rights national student advisory board conference committee. They say they chose violence as the conference’s theme because of its reach beyond medicine. Influenced by worldwide events involving violence against marginalized and minority populations, as well as other human rights violations, the duo organized the conference around racial violence, gender violence, and violence against health care workers.

Read the full story, published by the Geisel School of Medicine.

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