Research groups
Four research groups will explore the roles of different types of stakeholders in managing memories of disputed territories:
Cultural practitioners
The role of cultural practitioners in managing memories of disputed territories
Led by Dr Joanna Wawrzyniak of the University of Warsaw (Poland).
Background
Cultural practitioners (writers, musicians, visual artists, performers, etc) increasingly recognise the ways in which their work can have a positive role in mediating between different groups and communities, developing empathy and breaking down stereotypes. Equally, practitioners in the field of reconciliation and conflict management appreciate how artistic practice can open up a space where alternative futures can be imagined, ‘restorying’ entrenched situations.
Cultural practice can enable those who have been in conflict to express their own trauma while also recognising that those on the other side of the conflict have equally been subject to traumatic experience. And, since the experience of cultural practice need not be verbal, it has the advantage of potentially by-passing discourse which often reinforces entrenched positions.
Research scope & focus
This research group will explore how cultural practitioners can promote mutliple memories of disputed territory, finding ways to engage communities in remembering across borders in the name of peaceful coexistence. The group will also examine the role of cultural practice in the work of civil society organisations and NGOs in promoting non-antagonistic memories across borders. It will seek out examples of best practice across the case study countries and explore wider lessons for the role of cultural practice in comparable circumstances elsewhere in the world.
Researchers will analyse the aesthetic strategies used by writers, musicians, visual artists, performers and other cultural practitioners who seek to engage productively with tensions over disputed territory, in order to understand how non-antagonistic memories of such territories can be imagined (or re-imagined), challenging inflexible cultural traditions.
Researchers will also analyse how civil society organisations and NGOs use cultural processes in their work to foster reconciliation across borders, whether in terms of developing the artistic practice of professional cultural practitioners, using the work of such practitioners in their projects, or fostering participation in cultural activities as a way of mediating between communities and their comprehensions of history.
Both levels of analysis will yield a survey of current practice in the countries to be studied, and case studies which will offer lessons on best practice for wider application.
Civil society groups and NGOs / Cultural practitioners / Nation states / Regional organisations