Speaker Series: Jessica Greenberg

This talk draws from Greenberg’s recent ethnographic monograph: Justice in the Balance: Democracy, Rule of Law and the European Court of Human Rights. Greenberg will discuss the practices, ideologies and normative frameworks that define the rule of law, and whether and how these can weather a moment of profound crisis in Europe and beyond. 

To register, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org. 

Jessica Greenberg is a professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  Her first book, After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia (Stanford University Press 2014) analyzes the temporal and affective experience of democracy in the shift from popular resistance to political institutionalization. Her most recent book, Justice in the Balance: Democracy, Rule of Law and the European Court of Human Rights (Stanford 2025) asks why and how people channel visions of social change and justice through international legal institutions. In 2017, Greenberg earned a Masters in Law as a University of Illinois Fellow for Study in a Second Discipline. She has served as co-editor of the Political and Legal anthropology review (PoLAR), and is the recipient of multiple grants and awards, including two Fulbright Fellowships, and an NSF in Law and Science.