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.

Seminar: Breaking Binary History

The first of the “Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland” seminar series is now available online. The seminar was entitled “Breaking Binary History: Can the Stormont House Agreement facilitate a broader and more representative understanding of the past?”” by Dr Adrian Grant on 7 May 2020.

The seminar is part of the Transitional Justice Institute (TJI) and INCORE, in partnership with Healing Through Remembering and the John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace, online seminar series. The seminar was chaired by Professor Brandon Hamber.

Article: Archives and Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland

Professor Hamber with Gráinne Kelly recently produced a new and important article:

2-coverThrough the prism of Northern Ireland, this article explores the function of existing and proposed archives within societies emerging from conflict, and highlights their potential in adding complexity to understanding conflict and challenging dominant narratives. The article outlines how, despite progress since the Northern Ireland peace accord in 1998, efforts to deal with the past and human rights violations have been piecemeal and politically contested. In the absence of a comprehensive approach to the past, testimony gathering, initiated ‘unofficially’ at a community level, has provided opportunities for individuals’ experiences of the conflict to be documented and acknowledged. The recent Stormont House Agreement (2014) seeks to establish an Oral History Archive as a central repository for individuals to ‘share experiences and narratives related to the Troubles’. The article discusses the challenges in developing this ‘official’ archive, and the problem of reconciling competing historical narratives of the past. This is contrasted against the growth in bottom-up ‘storytelling’ or testimony work. The article argues for supplementing the official process with wider testimony gathering processes directed by and located within community contexts. It is argued that the deliberate juxtaposition of contrasting horizontal or inter-community narratives held by different local parties may allow for the emergence of a more complex and inclusive narrative of the past, rather than attempts to impose a shared vertical narrative, which is subject to either further contestation or uncomfortable compromise.

jhrp_si_webbanner

Importantly this article was part of a special edition of the Journal of Human Rights Practice focused on the issue of archives and their role in transitional justice processes. Gráinne Kelly, Brandon Hamber and colleagues from swisspeaceElisabeth BaumgartnerBriony Jonesand Ingrid Oliveira, were the guest editors of the journal. The journal special issue was timely as it meant that several high level academics and practitioners were able to distribute their research on the topic of archives focusing on a range of places: Northern Ireland, Kosovo, South Africa, Canada, etc.

The paper can be downloaded here for those with academic access, or alternative email Professor Hamber for a copy.