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

The EU-funded REPAST project is exploring how societies deal with the long shadow of previous conflicts, in a bid to generate insights and present tips for policymakers and civil culture. Scenario reports are currently being performed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Kosovo, Ireland, Poland and Spain.

‘We want to realize what facets of many complicated legacies are living on in a problematic fashion currently and develop road blocks to the integration and relations of the many populations in Europe,’ claims project coordinator Dimitra Milioni of the Cyprus College of Know-how. ‘To do so, we are investigating how conflict discourses are currently being formulated and disseminated in the general public sphere.’

As of March 2020, the project’s huge details-collection physical exercise has been concluded, and the scientists have started to process the comprehensive material they have gathered. The triggers and qualities of particular person conflicts may vary, but the scientists nevertheless assume to obtain commonalities in the handling of unpleasant and most likely contested collective reminiscences, Milioni describes.

Illuminating background

‘Our target is to arrive at some type of typology of troubled previous discourses currently,’ she claims. ‘We’re analysing how people today in many cultures and nations came to don’t forget the sources of these conflicts and how they negotiate and hopefully renegotiate the original triggers. And we also want to see how all this is connected to Europe currently, and European integration.’

Northern Ireland, for occasion, is a person territory where the previous is under no circumstances significantly absent.

‘There’s a regular undercurrent of stress, particularly all-around controversial issues,’ Milioni describes. ‘It is an example of how even a settled troubled previous can re-arise and could most likely also be revived, particularly by political discourse, at times by media discourse, but also by general public discourse.’ In REPAST’s other circumstance study international locations, the scenario is identical.

The project’s details collection regarded as 4 areas of expression: politics, background – the two oral and formal – and the media, as nicely as artwork and culture. It involved routines as diversified as interviewing locals about their possess recollections of previous activities or about the reminiscences that had been handed on to them by elders, exploring conventional and citizen media, scouring social gathering manifestos and viewing phase performances.

‘In Cyprus, for occasion, we observed out that many artists are working with political dance, which is not widely acknowledged,’ she claims. ‘We noticed how this type of artistic exercise essentially makes an attempt to recreate the previous, and most likely also difficulties hegemonic representations of this previous.’

Rapid ahead

The emphasis in the project, which is owing to conclusion in April 2021, will now change from details collection to details analysis, and to the manufacturing of means and recommendations for policymakers – the two in the REPAST circumstance study international locations and at EU amount – and civil culture organisations this kind of as non-governmental organisations invested in peacebuilding.

Other target audiences in areas with a bitter legacy include vacationer guides, for whom REPAST intends to organise seminars and deliver e-mastering supplies. A details platform will allow any person with an fascination to examine, look at and distinction info gathered by the project and accessibility its many other outputs, Milioni notes. The companions are also arranging to formulate methodology to aid upcoming investigation in the field.

Just one tool less than advancement is an on line video game that fosters players’ capacity to assess historic info. Numerous variations of the video game, which is mostly supposed for schoolchildren, will be created to accommodate distinctive ages and national contexts.

‘REPAST strives to express the plan that background as taught in universities, for example, or as presented in general public discourse, is always created,’ Milioni emphasises. ‘As citizens, we need to have to acquire a move back again, we need to have to develop the expertise to realize that what is currently being projected corresponds to a specific stage of look at, to a specific entry stage.’