Rennes 2 University experienced a special day, this Tuesday, November 19, 2024. Professor Denis Mukwege, gynecologist and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner, spent the day on the Villejean campus. The reason? The doctor, who has treated more than 80,000 survivors of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, inaugurated the faculty's new chair, The Doctor Denis Mukwege Action Research Chair.
Doctor honoris causa from Rennes 2, it was he, thanks to his exchanges with university teachers, who inspired the establishment of this chair.
“This work of memorializing survivors was missing”
“The idea is to continue Professor Mukwege’s work on violence against women and girls. This work of memorializing survivors was missing,” explains Renée Dickason, professor at Rennes 2 and coordinator of the chair.
This new chair will therefore aim to collect and preserve the testimonies of victims, witnesses and caregivers, and disseminate them to as many people as possible. “We are in times of peace, in the 21st century, and we see things we cannot imagine. The university is also a training center for learning to think and behave better, in order to escape certain codes which no longer have any reason to exist. »
Denis Mukwege “full of hope”
Each year, two international teacher-researchers specializing in the field of gender-based and sexual violence will also be hosted in Rennes 2 for seminars for civil society.
“Today, I am full of hope,” rejoiced Denis Mukwege at the opening of his conference this Tuesday. What I do is repair physically, but that is not enough. With you, I feel that we can go further to understand this suffering of victims of sexual violence. » This is the objective of this new chair at Rennes 2.
