Troubled pasts, and their implicati… – Information Centre – Research & Innovation

The EU-funded REPAST project is discovering how societies deal with the extended shadow of previous conflicts, in a bid to make insights and supply suggestions for policymakers and civil society. Scenario studies are being performed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Kosovo, Ireland, Poland and Spain.

‘We want to have an understanding of what factors of several tricky legacies dwell on in a problematic manner right now and create obstacles to the integration and relations of the several populations in Europe,’ suggests project coordinator Dimitra Milioni of the Cyprus University of Technological know-how. ‘To do so, we are investigating how conflict discourses are being formulated and disseminated in the general public sphere.’

As of March 2020, the project’s wide facts-selection exercise has been finished, and the scientists have started to system the in depth product they have collected. The causes and properties of particular person conflicts may possibly differ, but the scientists even now assume to discover commonalities in the handling of agonizing and likely contested collective memories, Milioni explains.

Illuminating historical past

‘Our goal is to arrive at some sort of typology of troubled previous discourses right now,’ she suggests. ‘We’re analysing how people today in several cultures and nations came to keep in mind the sources of these conflicts and how they negotiate and with any luck , renegotiate the original triggers. And we also want to see how all this is linked to Europe right now, and European integration.’

Northern Ireland, for occasion, is one particular territory exactly where the previous is under no circumstances considerably absent.

‘There’s a continuous undercurrent of tension, particularly around controversial troubles,’ Milioni explains. ‘It is an example of how even a settled troubled previous can re-emerge and could likely also be revived, particularly by political discourse, from time to time by media discourse, but also by general public discourse.’ In REPAST’s other case study nations around the world, the problem is similar.

The project’s facts selection regarded four parts of expression: politics, historical past – both oral and formal – and the media, as well as art and lifestyle. It bundled activities as diverse as interviewing locals about their possess recollections of previous occasions or about the memories that were being handed on to them by elders, discovering regular and citizen media, scouring social gathering manifestos and viewing stage performances.

‘In Cyprus, for occasion, we located out that several artists are operating with political dance, which is not greatly identified,’ she suggests. ‘We observed how this sort of creative activity essentially attempts to recreate the previous, and likely also issues hegemonic representations of this previous.’

Rapid forward

The emphasis in the project, which is thanks to finish in April 2021, will now shift from facts selection to facts assessment, and to the production of means and suggestions for policymakers – both in the REPAST case study nations around the world and at EU stage – and civil society organisations such as non-governmental organisations invested in peacebuilding.

Other concentrate on audiences in parts with a bitter legacy contain tourist guides, for whom REPAST intends to organise seminars and create e-mastering materials. A facts platform will permit everyone with an curiosity to discover, examine and contrast information collected by the project and entry its several other outputs, Milioni notes. The partners are also organizing to formulate methodology to aid long term research in the industry.

One tool below development is an on the internet activity that fosters players’ means to assess historical information. Numerous variations of the activity, which is largely intended for schoolchildren, will be produced to fit different ages and nationwide contexts.

‘REPAST strives to express the thought that historical past as taught in educational facilities, for example, or as introduced in general public discourse, is often manufactured,’ Milioni emphasises. ‘As citizens, we need to have to choose a phase back, we need to have to establish the competencies to have an understanding of that what is being projected corresponds to a specific position of view, to a specific entry position.’