Category: Memory

Invite: Oral Histories of the Troubles

We are delighted to welcome Professor Graham Dawson – INCORE Visiting Professor – to give a seminar entitled: 

“The Afterlife of Feelings in Oral Histories of the Troubles”

The seminar uses Cultural Studies and psychoanalytic theories and methods to explore the emotional dynamics in Troubles life stories and their impact on memory politics and conflict transformation.

Date:     10 December 2024
Time:     4pm-6pm
Venue:  Ulster University Belfast Campus, Room BD-01-023

Registration: https://forms.office.com/e/scL7wSEaX7

The Seminar

Professor Dawson will begin by introducing previous work on conflict memories and subjectivities that employs theories and methods from Cultural Studies and psychoanalysis to analyse the psychic and emotional dynamics within life stories of the Troubles, considering their significance for the politics of memory and conflict transformation. This paper will focus on his most recent work concerning oral histories in two collections: the Dúchas Oral History Archive at Falls Community Council in West Belfast and the oral histories recorded for the ongoing AHRC-funded project, Conflict, Memory, and Migration: Northern Irish Migrants and the Troubles in Great Britain (2019-22). Through close engagement with three interviews from these collections, Professor Dawson will discuss methods to hear, understand, and write about the afterlife of embodied feelings derived from experiences up to half a century ago, as well as their materialisation in the ‘flow’ and what is termed ‘associative diffraction’ of memory within an oral history conversation. In conclusion, reflections will be made on the implications of this approach—and of post-positivist oral history practice more generally—for critiquing the policy framework of ‘an inclusive oral history initiative’ in the Northern Ireland Troubles (Reconciliation and Legacy) Act 2023.

About Professor Dawson

Graham Dawson works in interdisciplinary cultural studies on popular memory of war and conflict, with a focus on the memories, legacies and afterlives of the Northern Irish Troubles in Ireland and Britain. 

His research investigates lived experience, subjectivity and memory as represented in oral histories and life stories; the temporal dynamics of ‘post-conflict’ culture; community-based memory-work; and the cultural politics of conflict transformation and historical justice. Author of Making Peace with the Past? Memory, Trauma and the Irish Troubles (2007) and co-editor of The Northern Ireland Troubles in Britain: Impacts, Engagements, Legacies and Memories (2017), he was Co-I on the oral history project, Conflict, Memory and Migration: Northern Irish Migrants and the Troubles in Great Britain (AHRC-funded 2019-22, continuing informally). His next book, Afterlives of the Troubles: Life Stories, Culture and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland, will be published by Manchester University Press in 2025. Graham was formerly Professor of Historical Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories at the University of Brighton.

Healing after Mass Atrocity

The Chair, Professor Brandon Hamber, with Professor Ingrid Palmary has just a published in a new article in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal. 

Hamber, Brandon and Palmary, Ingrid (2021). A Dance of Shadows and Fires: Conceptual and Practical Challenges of Intergenerational Healing after Mass Atrocity. Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, 15 (3), 100-120 [Download].

Abstract

The legacy of mass atrocity – including colonialism, slavery or specific manifestations such as apartheid – continue long after their demise. Applying a temporal inter-generational lens adds complications. We argue that mass atrocity creates for subsequent generations a deep psychological rupture akin to witnessing past atrocities. This creates a moral liability in the present. Healing is a process dependent on the authenticity (evident in discourse and action) with which we address contemporary problems. A further overriding task is to open social and political space for divergent voices. Acknowledgement of mass atrocity requires more than one-off events or institutional responses (the grand apology, the truth commission). Rather acknowledgement has to become a lived social, cultural and political reality. Without this acknowledgement, healing, either collectively or individually, is stymied. Healing after mass atrocity is as much about political action (addressing inequalities and racism) as an act of re-imaging created through constant and contested re-writing. 

 [Download]

Colombian Truth Commission Visit

On Human Rights Day (Friday 10 December 2021), the Colombian Truth Commission visited the Magee campus to launch a thought-provoking new Con-textualising Memory exhibition, which will be on display in the Magee campus until 27 January 2022.

This exhibition examines the nature of memory and testimony in the context of the Colombia and Northern Ireland Peace Processes, and features handcrafted dolls made by survivors of human rights violations in Colombia, with two of the doll-makers, Amparo Restrepo and Marina Echeverría, members of the Colombian exiled community in the UK, participating in the launch.

The exhibition is the latest installment in the evolving Conflict Textiles Collection which uses textiles to document and narrate conflict in Northern Ireland and around the world.

The textile dolls on display in the exhibition were created through a series of workshops hosted in partnership with Conflict Textiles, Colombian Truth Commission in the UK/Ireland and Ulster University’s Transitional Justice Institute.

Pictured at the launch of the Con-textualising Memory exhibit at the Magee Campus Library at Ulster University on International Human Rights Day were: (L-R) Roberta Bacic, Professor Brandon Hamber, Dr Lina Malagón, Peter Drury of the Colombian Truth Commission, Amparo Restrepo and Marina Echeverría.

Northern Ireland Visit

Along with the unveiling of the exhibition, Commissioner Dr Carlos M Beristain of the Truth Commission and Peter Drury Representative of The Colombian Truth Commission in the UK met with Ulster University academics, political representatives, and prominent figures in the Northern Ireland peace process. Dr Beristain attended these meetings virtually since last minute changes in the COVID-19 travel regulations meant that he had to cancel plans to travel to Northern Ireland. This is nothing new, over the COVID epidemic the Truth Commission has had to adopt a variety of strategies to reach out to the victims and survivors of Colombia’s conflict.

Speaking prior to the visit, Professor Brandon Hamber, the John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace at Ulster University, noted:

“The visit of The Colombian Truth Commission to the City comes at a critical time. Colombia is finalising its Truth Commission Report. Northern Ireland is grappling right now with exactly what to put in place to reckon with the past. There is a lot we can share from our different experiences. This is an important opportunity for us to listen, learn, and act to ensure both Northern Ireland and Colombia effectively deal with the past and create sustainable peace.”

Experiences of Living in Exile:

The exhibition showcases the textiles made by Colombian women who participated in The Truth Commission process in the UK.

Peter Drury of The Colombian Truth Commission said:

“The exercise of producing the arpillera dolls is one of many carried out during the process of the Colombian Truth Commission by victims and survivors of human rights violations and serious breaches of International Humanitarian Law as a means to be able to reveal hidden truths about their experiences. These truths have often been concealed for many years by trauma, anger and fear. The arpillera doll-making exercise has sought to allow the makers of the dolls to project their life experiences into the dolls they have fashioned with thread and needle.”

Speaking about the Con-textualising Memory exhibit, curator, Roberta Bacic of Conflict Textiles said:

“Through textile language participants engaged in a process of touching, exploring, stitching, and sharing their experience of living in exile due to the Colombian conflict.  Doing it against the odds, (because we were creating a communal experience via Zoom), we managed closeness, trust building and to make a piece of tangible art that captures the power of expressing what is not possible to say in words.”

Memory & Truth Seminar:

Following the exhibition launch, Dr Carlos M Beristain of The Colombian Truth Commission joined academics in an online seminar, Sharing experiences of memory (Recognition) and truth in post-conflict times: Colombia and Northern Ireland.

During the seminar, the truth and memory of victims’ rights within the context of the Northern Ireland and Colombia’s peace processes were discussed.

Exhibition details:

The exhibition launch marks International Human Rights Day and coincided with the Northern Ireland Human Rights Festival 2021 (3 – 10 December 2021).

The exhibition will be on display from 10 December 2021 to 27 January 2022, on the first floor of the library, Block MM (beside Scullery Ciúin).