Abstract
The GenDJus project is conceived as an interdisciplinary research project in the areas of Discourse and Law on Gender and Sexuality for the investigation of the impact of prejudice, stereotypes and bias on the three international human rights courts – the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the African Court of Human and People’s Rights –, the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) and the highest national courts in Italy. An effective protection of individuals can be indeed achieved through language: if words are unable to express the need for protection that underlies certain demands for justice, then there is a risk of not only violating human rights applicable to the concrete situation, but also of fueling obstacles to fundamental freedoms across the EU. That is why, by means of a corpus-based analysis of judicial texts in Italian, English and Spanish, the project explores as a testbed a specific area where these subtle forms of discrimination seem to be more persistent, i.e., sexual, reproductive and parental rights, and it does so from both a linguistic and a legal (i.e. international law and EU law) point of view. Identifying such practices and understanding them - in order to eradicate them through language and law - can contribute to the improvement of the functioning of justice and to the enjoyment of fundamental rights without any discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation or gender identity, thus avoiding time-consuming and costly court proceedings. While advancing innovative methodologies to detect new forms of discrimination, the project identifies concrete ways to improve judicial discourse(s) and avoid the unconscious reiteration of negative attitudes against gender and sexual minorities in the international/EU/Italian spheres. To this end, several outcomes have been identified: an international workshop in Italy; an international workshop in the UK; several trainings with key stakeholders, including judges; guidelines for an anti-stereotyping judicial discourse; an international final conference; a methodological paper and an edited volume, along with any extra publication that the project research team may deem useful; national and international dissemination of results as well as an ongoing public engagement activity. Results: All the expected results of GenDJus have been reached by the end of the project. The interdisciplinary investigation of complex topics like prejudice, stereotypes and bias in sexual, reproductive and parental rights through the prism of non-discrimination has triggered a thorough theoretical reflection on the role of law and language in the full enjoyment of human rights by specific people and communities. It also encouraged the development of an unexplored interdisciplinary methodology that can be easily replicated with other languages and in other legal contexts, beyond the GenDJus’ own scope. These results include: the creation of the first multilingual (English, Spanish and Italian) comparable corpus of judicial texts in this area of human rights, which was analysed through a legal and linguistic perspective and the related outcome is at the centre of the project’s edited collection; a better understanding and a clearer definition of the rights under analysis, starting from the prohibition of discrimination, through a fair balance between the needs of gender and sexual minorities to be treated equally and the interests of the community in which they live as a whole; the identification, through dedicated Guidelines, of strategies to improve the way legal experts and, in particular, judges argue about gender as well as sexual minorities in general and, more specifically, when they address cases related to sexual, reproductive and parental rights, thus avoiding linguistic and legal discrimination; the improvement of the knowledge on these topical issues through international and national cooperative training activities addressed to legal practitioners (e.g. judges and lawyers) and scholars who are not aware of the linguistic implications of their reasoning and writing, as well as linguists who are not trained in international law/human rights/EU law; the establishment of an international network of interdisciplinary scholars interested in linguistic and legal investigations of judicial discourse on gender and LGBTIQ+ issues, to pave the way for wider research projects and funding applications while strengthening the internationalisation of Italian academia. Publications based on the project’s analysis include: Danisi C (2023) ‘Maternità surrogata come reato “universale”: considerazioni di diritto internazionale e dell’Unione europea’ Rivista di studi giuridici sull’orientamento sessuale e l’identità di genere - GenIUS (2), ISSN 2384-9495, pp. 75-94 (available open access both on the Journal’s database - https://gendjus.it/sites/default/files/attachments/Danisi_Maternita.pdf - and on the GenDJus website); Peruzzo K (2024) “Trans, Transgender, and Transsexual in Case Law: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis of ECtHR Judgments” in Eva Lucía Jiménez-Navarro and Leonor María Martínez Serrano (eds), Where Gender and Corpora Meet: New Insights into Discourse Analysis, Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 157-180 (available at https://tinyurl.com/5n7sbavp); Gilleri G (2025) “Human Rights’ Harmful and Harmless Gendered Outlaws” in Tamsin Phillipa Paige and Claerwen O’Hara (eds), Queer Encounters with International Law: Lives, Communities, Subjectivities. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 153-174 (available at https://tinyurl.com/2h22f96w); Danisi C, Ferreira N. (2025), “X, Y and Z (European Union): Who is Protected as Queer Refugee by the Court of Justice of the European Union?” in Nuno Ferreira, Maria Federica Moscati, Senthorun Raj (eds), Queer Judgments, London: Counterpress, pp. 495-512 (available at https://tinyurl.com/7hc98zzs); Pontrandolfo G., Sarni C. (2025) ‘Del ‘método ROPA’ a la ‘maternidad en solitario’: el discurso traducido de las páginas web sobre reproducción asistida’ The Journal of Specialised Translation (44) 188-216 (available at https://tinyurl.com/yeu9uhf7); Pontrandolfo G., Danisi C. (2025) “Theoretical and Methodological Challenges of Interdisciplinary Legal-linguistic Research: Reflections from the GenDJus Project” in Stanislaw Goźdź-Roszkowski and Gianluca Pontrandolfo (eds) In the Minds of Judges. Argumentative Discourse at the Intersection of Law and Language. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 257-279 (available at https://tinyurl.com/342zbxc3); Peruzzo K. (2025), “International Judicial Discourse and Non-derogatory Language Use: A Case Study on ECtHR Judgments”, in Stanisław Goźdź-Roszkowski and Gianluca Pontrandolfo (eds) In the Minds of Judges. Argumentative Discourse at the Intersection of Law and Language. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 227-256 (available at https://gendjus.it/sites/default/files/attachments/Peruzzo_In_the_Minds_2025.pdf); Gilleri G, Miyamoto E. (2025), “Broadening Protections? The European Court of Human Rights’ Discourse on Gender-Based Violence against Trans and Intersex Persons” The Italian Review of International and Comparative Law (2), pp. 331-362 (available at https://tinyurl.com/y55umj73); Gilleri G. (2025), ‘Abituarsi ad altro (e all’altro): i diritti umani e il metodo queer femminista’ Quaderni di SIDI Blog (11), pp. 187-206. ISSN 2465-0927 (available https://tinyurl.com/5ssmrncj); Gilleri G. (2025), ‘Gestazione per altri all’italiana: persone, diritti e stereotipi di genere di un reato “universale”’ Diritti umani e diritto internazionale 19(1), pp. 101-128 (available at https://tinyurl.com/kwe7j5tp); Brambilla E. (2025), ‘Etiamsi omnes, ego non: An Exploratory Study of Argument Types in Separate Opinions’ Comparative Legilinguistics (64), pp. 484-511 (available at https://tinyurl.com/5dwfz6pr). The GenDJus research team promoted also MA and BA thesis on the project’s topics with the aim of involving young students in the research and in the discussion on the problems emerged during the life of the project. These include: Rigali A. (2025), La violenza di genere contro le donne perpetrata dalle autorità pubbliche nella giurisprudenza della Corte interamericana dei diritti umani: un’analisi critica del discorso assistita da corpus, unpublished MA thesis (Università degli Studi di Trieste). Supervisor: prof. G. Pontrandolfo; co-supervisor: Dr. G. Gilleri; Ms. C. Sarni; Rizzardi V (2025), Pregiudizi, stereotipi e bias di genere nel caso Manuela y otros vs. El Salvador: un’analisi critica del discorso giudiziario, unpublished BA thesis (Università degli Studi di Trieste). Supervisor: prof. G. Pontrandolfo; co-supervisor: Ms. C. Sarni; Sattin E. (2026), Linguaggio giuridico e tutela dei diritti delle persone LGBTI: il caso della Corte interamericana dei diritti umani, unpublished MA thesis (Università degli Studi di Trieste). Supervisor: prof. G. Pontrandolfo; co-supervisor: Ms. C. Sarni. All the research outputs and publications completed under GenJus are available in open access via the website of the project: https://gendjus.it/research-outputs. Contacts For more information and collaboration requests, please contact professors Gianluca Pontrandolfo and Carmelo Danisi (respectively, gpontrandolfo@units.it and carmelo.danisi2@unibo.it).
Dettagli del progetto
Responsabile scientifico: Carmelo Danisi
Strutture Unibo coinvolte:
Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali
Coordinatore:
Università degli Studi di TRIESTE(Italy)
Contributo totale Unibo: Euro (EUR) 95.000,00
Durata del progetto in mesi: 24
Data di inizio
30/11/2023
Data di fine:
28/02/2026
