The Interdisciplinary Research Group on Art, Performance and Media in (Post-) Conflict is led by Dr Stefanie Lehner, School of English.

The group is currently organizing a series of monthly seminars among group members with the aim of introducing members to one another's research. These take the format of short presentations, pitches, and/or provocations by group members, emphasizing the interdisciplinary dimensions of their work, followed by discussion and debate. We have established and continue to maintain an interactive calendar of events with the objective of encouraging interdisciplinary engagement along with raising awareness of activities across the group and beyond.

Presently, we are also organising a public event/symposium that will take place at the end of May in a Belfast venue on the theme ‘Locating Narratives and Objects in Conflict Transformation’.  

Art, Performance and Media in the (Post-)Conflict Societies: The Production of Shared Space

Description of the Project

A decade and a half after the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, debate in Northern Ireland remains increasingly focused on what have become known as ‘legacy issues’ – particularly the ways in which experiences of conflict, violence, injustice, and division are articulated and received within the public and private realms. Art, performance, and media play key roles in (a) narrating and disseminating those experiences through performative, visual, and literary practices, and (b) institutional, personal, and artistic processes of collating those experiences. Storytelling and archiving have crucial functions in processes of conflict transformation and the pursuit of social justice on an international scale. These processes connect Northern Ireland with other post-conflict societies, such as Chile, Brazil, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, and South Africa.

This IRG critically explores these processes and practices from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective by bringing together a variety of scholars from across different AHSS Schools with expertise in the study of (post-)conflict culture. Taken together, our research is concerned with developing and accessing methods, approaches, and resources for exploring the intersections between ethics and aesthetics; the interactions between artistic, political, and performative practices; the role of audiences and authorship; and the relation of these to questions of memory and forgetting, testimony and witnessing, translation and representation, healing and reconciliation.

The IRG was founded last November and has held a seminar series and organized a one-day symposium based on our research interests in storytelling and archiving under the theme of ‘Location of Narratives’. The event took place on 7 June at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, to explore questions of ownership and authorship of narratives, and to consider the ethical implications of storytelling. Issues involving the re-presentation of experiences in the physical environment and ideas concerning the ways in which material objects or locations trigger specific narratives were also addressed. Outcomes include outreach as well as working papers and podcasts, which are available via the Institute website as well as our website www.performingthepeace.wordpress.com.

Our current project is ‘The Production of Shared Space’. In Northern Ireland and other divided societies, the phrase ‘shared space’ is commonly used to designate communal or neutral geographical and/or physical spaces; spaces that play a crucial role for conflict transformation and the pursuit and distribution of social justice. Expanding on this understanding by drawing on conceptualizations of space by de Certeau, Lefebvre, Soya, and others, ‘shared space’ is here understood in a metaphorical sense, something that is imaginatively produced and actively constituted by culture – the arts, performance, and media. We propose to examine the production of ‘shared space’ in post-conflict arts and culture through a diachronic, comparative, and interdisciplinary approach. A special emphasis is put on practice-led research, especially applied drama and documentary, which in-themselves constitute potential ‘shared spaces’.

The research questions guiding this project are:

• In what ways, and to what extent, is culture itself potentially a ‘shared space’? What roles do the arts, performance, media, as well as journalism play in actively producing (as well as facilitating access to) ‘shared space’? How can this contribute to the goals of conflict transformation and widening social justice?
• How is ‘shared space’ produced, commodified, and consumed by the arts and media, and their audiences? How can building cultural capital contribute to challenging sources of conflict and reimagining social and political communities after violent conflict?
• In what ways can practice-led approaches highlight innovative ways of creating and critiquing ‘shared space’?
• What kinds of ‘shared’ spaces are created by arts and culture? Does the notion of ‘shared space’ in post-conflict contexts consider and include divisions along the lines of class and gender?
• To what extent does the metaphorical conception of ‘shared space’ within the realm of culture overlap with, and allow a rethinking of, sociological conceptions of ‘shared space’ within the realms of civic society and politics? How are conceptions of the individual and society (re)shaped by the notion of a ‘shared space’?

 

Bios of Group Members

Hilary Downey is Lecturer in Marketing (Consumer Behaviour). Her research stems from the domain of Consumer Culture, with a particular emphasis on identity and consumption from the context of vulnerable populations. Her research addresses the Transformative Consumer Research (2006) agenda of wellbeing. See profile

David Grant has been Managing Editor of Theatre Ireland magazine, Programme Director of the Dublin Theatre Festival and Artistic Director of the Lyric Theatre, Belfast and has directed more than eighty theatre productions in venues as diverse as the Royal National Theatre and HMP Maghaberry. He has been a lecturer in Drama at Queen’s University since 2001 where he teaches and researches in acting, directing and applied drama. He has a special interest in the Image Theatre techniques of Augusto Boal and has supervised PhD projects in prison theatre, arts & disability and entrepreneurship in the arts. See profile

Eamonn Hughes is Assistant Director of the Institute of Irish Studies and Senior Lecturer in the School of English. See profile

Declan Keeney is a documentary filmmaker, a PhD student and a Teaching Fellow in Film Studies. His thesis is provisionally entitled “Filming ‘Memory’: Documentary Practice in a Post Conflict Northern Ireland”. A member of ‘The Guild of Television Cameramen’ Declan has substantial industry experience having spent 13 years working for the BBC across many different genres from factual documentary to BBC Network News.  See http://www.echogateproductions.com

Stefanie Lehner is Lecturer in Irish Literature in the School of English. Her research interests are in post-conflict literature and culture, in particular in the performative dimensions of conflict resolution practices. See profile

Andrea Mayr is Lecturer in Modern English Language and Linguistics in the School of English. Her research and teaching interests are in the area of discourse analysis and the critical analysis of language and images in the media, particularly multimodal media representations of crime and deviance, such as in real crime TV and True Crime. See profile

Cahal McLaughlin is Professor in Film Studies, a documentary filmmaker and writer. He is director of the Prisons Memory Archive (www.prisonsmemoryarchive.com) and his most recent production is We Never Give Up II, a collaboration with the Human Rights Media Centre, Cape Town, on reparations in South Africa. See profile

Megan Minogue is a 3rd year PhD student in the School of English, where her thesis focuses on the works of Stewart Parker, Christina Reid, and Gary Mitchell. Her research interests are in the representations of Protestantism and Loyalism.

Connal Parr is a 3rd Year PhD candidate and teaching assistant in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy. His thesis focuses on Protestant working-class politics and culture since the mid-1960s, with special emphasis on the theatrical and television work of Sam Thompson, Stewart Parker, Graham Reid, Marie Jones and Gary Mitchell. He is a board member of Etcetera Theatre Company, established in September 2012 to stage plays and generate artistic initiative in working class Protestant areas. See profile

Michael Pierse is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities at Queen’s University Belfast. Michael is author of Writing Ireland’s Working Class (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), and his current research aims to address the Institute’s current theme, Thinking Forward through the Past, by unearthing submerged narratives and discourses of Northern Irish life that will enhance our understanding of class and culture into the future. See profile

Charlene Small is a PhD student in the School of English at Queen’s University Belfast. Her thesis is based on the father figure in contemporary Irish poetry and her research interests include the depiction of the family in literature, issues of masculinity and of the use public and private spaces in poetry.

 

Statement of Aims

The primary objective of this IRG is to develop new cross-disciplinary insights on the roles that the arts, performance, and media play in conflict transformation processes and the pursuit and distribution of social justice. The potential, role, and impact of these elements often underpin the research interests of academics working on conflict transformation and social justice; they lie at the heart of the work of practitioners, the practices of restorative justice and truth recovery; and they are ubiquitous within education. We will develop these insights by creating a space for exploring areas of mutual interest through collaborative enterprise. In particular, we wish to explore how arts and culture produce and constitute ‘shared space’ in post-conflict societies. For that, we will build on and expand existing links, collaborations, and networks within and beyond academia, specifically arts institutions, both locally and internationally. We will focus on impact enhancement by increasing our scope and contact with the wider society in Northern Ireland and elsewhere; and by attracting policymakers and internationally renowned scholars.

 

Strategic Aims

The immediate strategic objectives of the IRG are threefold:

(a)    Dissemination: we will disseminate the outcomes of our current research project on ‘Location of Narratives’ through publications;

(b)    Global Research Network: we willexpand the IRG’s activities to a national and international level and develop a global research network on the role of contemporary arts, performance, and media in post-conflict societies through four Network Workshops;

(c)    Funding: we will develop a strategic and long-term approach to research funding by holding four Research Grant Workshops in order to prepare and submit a substantial funding proposal to a mayor funding body.

 

Programme of Activities

We are planning to hold a series of four network and four funding workshops to enhance and expand collaborative partnerships and add further interdisciplinary and comparative dimensions to our project and research. These workshops will enable us to develop, prepare, and submit several funding bids.  

 

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