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Book Launch Roundtable: Peace and the Politics of Memory

This roundtable moderated by Orli Fridman introduces the new book Peace and the Politics of Memory that explores memory politics and its impact on the quality of peace in societies transitioning from a violent past.

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This Roundtable introduces the new book Peace and the Politics of Memory (Mannergren J, Björkdahl A, Buckley-Zistel S, Kappler S and Williams T. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2024). Situating the book in the literature of critical Peace Research and Memory Studies, the authors advance the idea that the quality of peace is affected by the extent to which memories are entangled. The co-authored monograph advances and employs an original theoretical framework to study mnemonic formations through the interplay between sites, agency, narratives and events. Acknowledging the entanglement of memory in mnemonic formations, it renders visible the fluidity of memory-making, and the political frictions between competing memories. It provides rich empirical case studies that analyse and compare mnemonic formations in Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, South Africa and Cambodia. Through this comparative investigation the book assesses how and why memory politics contributes to the construction of a just peace or the perpetuation of conflict, or nuances in between.

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Presenters

Annika Björkdahl is Professor of Political Science at Lund University, Sweden. Her research includes ideas and norms in International Relations, Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice, Politics of memory, and Gender Studies. She is currently conducting research within the project funded by the Swedish Research Council Beyond the Archive: Knowledge production through the excavation of women Holocaust survivors’ testimonies. Her research has been published in journals such as Security Dialogue, Third World Quarterly, Peacebuilding and Political Geography and research monographs Peacebuilding and Spatial Transformation: Peace, Space and Place (2017, with Stefanie Kappler), Troubling Testimonies: Women’s Narratives of War ( 2024 with Johanna Mannergren and Kristine Höglund). She is the editor of several volumes such as Spatializing Peace and Conflict (2016, co-ed with Susanne Buckley-Zistel), She is also the co-editor of the Palgrave Book Series Rethinking Peace and Conflict Research. 

Johanna Mannergren is Professor in Peace and Development Research at Södertörn University. Her research concerns peace processes with a focus on the politics of memory, transitional justice and everyday peace. Some of her recent work has investigated museums as sites for everyday memory practices, the role of silence in transitional justice processes, and feminist methodologies in ethnographic peace research. She is the author of Troubling Testimonies: Women’s Narratives of War ( New York University Press 2024 with Annika Björkdahl and Kristine Höglund) and she is section editor for the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies.

Stefanie Kappler is Professor in Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding at Durham University, UK. She is interested in the intersection between peace, art and memory and has been working on research projects on the cultural heritage of conflict, memory and the politics of peace, and the role of art in peace processes. She is Associate Editor of Peacebuilding. Recent publications include, among others, The Art of Peace Formation. Arts-Based Social Movements, Opportunities and Blockages. Edinburgh University Press, 2024 (edited with Birte Vogel and Oliver Richmond) and “Soundscapes of Mostar. Space and Art Beyond the Divided City”. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 16(5), 2022 (with Lydia Cole).

Susanne Buckley-Zistel is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and Executive Director of the Center for Conflict Studies at the Philipps University Marburg. Prior that this she held positions at the Free University Berlin, the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and King’s College London. From 2015-6 she was a Senior Fellow at the Käter Hamburger Kolleg for Global Cooperation Research and she has been acting as the Deputy Chairperson of the German Foundation for Peace Research since 2016. Her main interests lie in (transitional) justice, memory, gender, space and post-colonialism. Susanne has published widely on these issues, including the co-edited volumes Memorials in Times of Transition, Transitional Justice Theories, Gender in Transitional Justice, Women – Violence – Refugees, Perpetrators and Perpetration of Mass Violence, as well as Spatializing Peace and Conflict.

Timothy Williams is Junior Professor of Insecurity and Social Order and Chairman of the interdisciplinary research centre RISK at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich in Germany, as well as Vice President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Timothy is the author of the book The Complexity of Evil. Perpetration and Genocide (2021, Rutgers University Press) and has co-edited a volume on perpetrators (with Susanne Buckley-Zistel, 2018, Routledge). His research deals with violence, focussing on its dynamics, particularly at the micro-level, and its consequences for post-conflict societies and the politics of memory, as well as with discrimination and resilience.

Moderation

Orli Fridman is an associate professor at the Belgrade based Faculty of Media and Communications (FMK). She also is the academic director of the School for International Training (SIT) learning center in Belgrade. She is the author of Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories (Amsterdam University Press, 2022), and the co-editor, with Sarah Gensburger of The Covid-19 Pandemic and Memory: remembrance, commemoration and archiving in crisis (Palgrave, 2024) and numerous peer reviewed articles and book chapters.

In Cooperation with: Digital Memory Studies Association (dMSA) | an initiative of the Memory Studies Association (MSA), a professional association for Memory Studies scholars and practitioners active in museums, memorial institutions, archives, the arts and other fields engaged in remembrance.

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