Dr. Gandolfo has won a BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant to co-host a symposium titled "Missing Memorials and Absent Bodies: Negotiating Post-conflict Trauma and Memorialisation" in Utrecht, the Netherlands in August, 2016
Missing Memorials and Absent Bodies: Negotiating Post-conflict Trauma and Memorialisation
Utrecht University
August, 2016
This symposium will analyse the ways in which memorialisation and commemoration facilitate the ‘mourning work’ of communities in post-conflict societies where memorials, bodies and/or mutual acknowledgement are absent.
Assisting psychological, social and political recovery, memorialisation and commemoration are second in value to monetary compensation during state reparations and are as integral to lasting recovery as the accords that end hostility. When practised sans contestation, memorialisation and commemoration promote acknowledgement that nurtures a dialogue between survivors and perpetrators, as in Argentina and South Africa.
Bringing together scholars and practitioners from sociology, psychology, memory and cultural studies for the two-day symposium at the University of Utrecht, the participants will reflect on the rituals of ‘mourning work’, the inability to memorialise, the absence of acknowledgement, as well as the implications for survivors and perpetrators.