Visualising War and Peace

The Visualising War podcast recently interviewed award-winning photographer Peter van Agtmael. Over a career spanning 20 years, Peter has focused on representing different manifestations of the US at war. His first book, ‘Disco Night Sept. 11’, brought together images of the USA at war in the post-9/11 era, from 2006-2013. His second, ‘Buzzing at the Sill’, focused on the US in the shadow of recent wars; it does not capture images of armed conflict, but examines aspects of American society that have been shaped by and helped to shape the wars that America has fought. His third book, ‘Sorry for the War’ explores the vast dissonance between how the United States has visualised itself at war and how people on the ground (soldiers and civilians) have experienced those wars, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. Peter has won multiple prizes for these books, as well as being highly sought after by media organisations such as the New York Times and the New Yorker. For the last ten years he has also been capturing images of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine.

In the podcast, Peter talks about what motivated him to go to war as a photographer in the first place, and how his understanding of war and his approach to conflict photography have evolved over time. Aware that a single photograph can only capture one person’s perspective and a tiny slice of time, Peter underlines the importance of a multiplicity of images which together can build a sense of context, change over time and diversity of experience. He tries to document wars as holistically as possible, while still going deep and getting personal. He is particularly interested in unpicking the gap between our habits of imagining, viewing and understanding conflict and how it impacts people for real. There is a strong sense in his books that he is myth-busting, as he invites us to look critically at our own habits of seeing and really stretches our understanding of war’s dynamics, impacts and aftermath. 

Among other things, Peter talks about the aesthetics of conflict photography, the authenticity and 'trustworthiness' of the images he tries to take, and his role as a narrator - both when taking individual photographs and when curating them into photographic collections and books. We discuss the opportunities that long-form books can offer compared with short-form articles, in documenting both multiplicity and complexity. And we consider what written text can add to images, in contextualising and sometimes even dispelling a mirage. Along the way we reflect on the vital role that photography and a reflective press can play in deconstructing misconceptions and idealisations of war that political rhetoric and other social pressures so often rely on.

We hope you enjoy the episode! This blog captures some of the images that Peter talks about; and listeners can see more on Peter's website and instagram page.

For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please visit the University of St Andrews Visualising War website. 

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin

In this episode, Alice interviews journalists Margaux Benn and Noorrahman Rahmani, about their experiences of war and peace reporting in Afghanistan. Noorrahman comes from Afghanistan, and he has spent much of the last fifteen years working for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), first as a linguistic, then as a press monitor, and more recently as the IWPR’s Country Director in Afghanistan, managing their extensive work programmes there. Margaux is a freelance journalist who has worked for Agence-France-Press, France 24, Le Figaro and the New York Times, among other media organisations. Her career has taken her to Sudan, Kenya, the Central African Republic and Cyprus – but for the past four years she has been living and working in Afghanistan. Together, they reflect on the complex relationship between conflict and journalism, and on the challenges that journalists have faced in Afghanistan, both before and after the Taliban retook control in August 2021.

Noor discusses how the media scene in Afghanistan has changed over the past twenty years, with hundreds of radio stations and TV channels emerging, sponsored by a wide range of organisations. He also details some of the vital work that the IWPR has done in training local journalists (women and men) in developing professional networks across the country and in reaching parts of Afghanistan that foreign journalists often struggle to get to. He explains what a difference it can make to a local community to have their voices heard, drawing international attention or government aid to the region. As Noor points out, journalism has been difficult and dangerous for decades in Afghanistan, but all the more so now that the Taliban are back in power. Despite the challenges, Noor hopes that journalists on the ground will find new ways to engage with the Taliban, and he stresses the importance of peace reporting: that is, journalism that critically explores the drivers of conflict, that empowers local communities to make their voices heard, and that promotes conflict resolution between different groups.

Margaux discusses her experiences as a foreign journalist in conflict zones, and compares it with that of local journalists who often run even greater risks while struggling to make ends meet. She reflects on the different biases that different sections of the international press can have when reporting on conflicts outside their region, reminding us that international news stories are often driven more by outside perceptions of history than by what is really happening on the ground. She also discusses the different impact which long-form articles, documentaries, radio and podcasts can have, in comparison with breaking news and short-form media, and this gets her talking about the power of different kinds of storytelling. Margaux underlines the importance of contextualising conflict, not just reporting on combat itself, and she gives us a flavour of how wide-ranging 'war reporting' can be in looking at many different causes and consequences of conflict. For her, it is vital that we visualise war through individual people's stories and experiences.

Between them Noor and Margaux offer fascinating insights into the current state of media in Afghanistan and into war and peace reporting generally.

We hope you enjoy the episode! For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please visit the University of St Andrews Visualising War website. 

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin

In this week’s podcast, Alice and Nicolas talk with Dr Thomas Biggs, a lecturer in Latin at the School of Classics at St Andrews, about Roman representations of war, from the beginnings of Latin literature in the third century BCE to the imperial period and beyond. They particularly discuss the impact of Rome's Punic Wars on Roman storytelling habits. Tom is the leading expert on the reception of the First Punic War in antiquity and how it influenced the ways in which the Romans thought about and visualised war more generally.  His book Poetics of the First Punic War was published in 2020.

The First Punic War was the first large-scale, overseas war of the Romans and in many ways laid the foundations for Rome’s vast empire. From the beginning, this major conflict prompted authors - many of whom were war veterans themselves, and many displaced to Rome due to conflict - to innovate with their writing. Drawing on present experiences as well as traditional Greek models of writing about war (Homer), they used poetry and drama to conceptualise the nature and impact of this biggest military conflict yet and, in the process, created Latin literature! 

Among other topics, we discuss:

• How engagement with the First Punic War impacted Roman culture and society for centuries to come and led to the beginnings of Latin literature 
• What early Latin literature and literary engagement with war was like 
• How writing about war, and drawing on established Greek literary models to do so, impacted Roman identity and self-definition 
• The interplay between different forms of writing and material culture such as coins and sculptures 
• How generation after generation of Romans engaged with the First Punic War in very different ways and what significance the war had to Romans at different points of their history 
• How engaging with modern narratives of war can enhance our understanding of the ancient world 
• What the ancient world might still have to offer us in our attempts to conceptualise and come to terms with war and conflict in the present

We hope you enjoy the episode! 
 
Tom has put together a blog containing some excerpts of the texts he talks about. You can find out more about his work on his website at the University of St Andrews.

For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. 

For more information about the Visualising War project, individuals and their projects, access to resources and more, please have a look on the University of St Andrews Visualising War website.  

Music composed by Jonathan Young 
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin 

In this episode, Alice talks to Drs Owen Rees and Roel Konijnendijk, two experts on ancient Greek warfare and its enduring influence. Owen has written about both land and sea battles in the ancient world, and his current research focuses on the experiences of soldiers: in particular, how they were prepared for war and how they transitioned back to civilian life afterwards. This has led to wider work comparing veteran experiences in ancient and modern times, and Owen has also published on trauma and PTSD in the ancient world. Roel is an expert on ancient Greek military thought, from its origins in storytelling to its codification as a 'science of warfare'. His book Classical Greek Tactics re-examines the literary evidence for Greek tactical thought during the 5th and 4th centuries BC, distinguishing between idealising representations and the more brutal, chaotic reality. He has also looked at how later military thinkers (both soldiers and scholars) have drawn on ancient models and deployed or adapted them in their own times. Owen and Roel are both regular contributors to Ancient Warfare Magazine, among other publications, and Roel recently achieved YouTube stardom with an interview rating the representation of battle tactics in films and TV. 

In the podcast, we discuss the myth-making around different aspects of ancient Greek warfare, and particularly the Greek elite's interest in narrating pitched battles involving tightly-packed hoplite troops. While naval encounters, ambushes and other kinds of engagement got more summary treatment, pitched battles became a literary trope or set-piece of Greek history writing, generating clichés about Greek warfare that did not reflect the much more complex, messier reality. 

We also touch on military training, and debunk the idea that Sparta's system was as focused or thorough as is often supposed. Owen discusses the social conditioning - via storytelling and commemoration practices - that prepared Athenian soldiers to fight. And Roel outlines the tensions between Homeric military ideals (of risk-taking and self-sacrifice) and how Greek generals really needed their soldiers to behave. 

As the conversation goes on, we look at the ways in which generals during the 18th century turned to ancient Greek models to shape their own military practice, reviving or perpetuating the emphasis on decisive pitched battles as the only way to win a war.  We also discuss how narratives and images of ancient Greek warfare have found their way into popular culture, in particular through art, film and gaming. And we reflect on the 'safe distance' which the ancient world can offer as place to explore modern experiences of conflict - whether as a soldier/veteran or civilian. As Owen and Roel explain, the storytelling that has been done about ancient Greek warfare from antiquity to today continues to shape how we visualise many aspects of war, both positively and negatively.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please have a look on the University of St Andrews Visualising War website.  

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin 

In this episode, Alice talks to Dr Emily Spiers, who is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Futures at Lancaster University; Dr Will Slocombe, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Liverpool and specialist in Science Fiction; and Lt Col Matthew Brown, Chief of Future Concepts and Strategy with the RAF (on loan from the US Air Force). All three have been collaborating on a project, led by Matthew, that uses fictional storytelling to help members of the RAF and the wider military community visualise what the future may hold. Two editions of the RAF's Stories from the Future have been published already, with more to come soon.

Emily kicks the conversation off by explaining what 'futures literacy' is: a skill or capability that we can all develop to help us imagine and discuss the future and make better decisions in the present. Traditionally, futures thinking has been done by a handful of experts behind closed doors, with a particular focus on science and technology. However, momentum is shifting towards more creative and inclusive approaches, with storytelling proving to be a powerful tool that enables lots of different people to debate possible, plausible, preferable and not-so-preferable futures. 

This gets us thinking about science fiction. Will discusses the 'prophetic vision' which science fiction has often been thought to have, but also its more systematic use in futures thinking in more recent years, in particular in defence and security contexts. We talk about the overlaps between 'science fiction', 'speculative fiction' and 'useful fiction'; and Matthew gives us some insights into the RAF Stories from the Future project - how it came about, its focus and aims, and what impact it has been having. As he puts it, the beauty of all the future scenarios sketched in the project is that they are 'just stories', but stories that gets people talking, thinking and projecting.

Matthew talks about the rapid pace of change, recent geopolitical shifts, the growing climate crisis, and the urgency of involving more people in futures thinking as the defence and security landscapes shift. Emily discusses her work with children/young adults, and the wellbeing impacts which can result when young people feel that they have some agency in shaping potentially scary futures. We hear about the virtual 'Museum of the Future' which Emily and Will have been working on, under the direction of Jim Maltby (a Principal Scientist at the Defence Science Technology Laboratory); and Emily also discusses the Past Futures Project, which looks at history as a valuable repository of futures not taken. We end by talking about the role and responsibility of futures literacy to visualise aftermath, conflict resolution and peace-building.

We hope you enjoy the episode! For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please have a look on the University of St Andrews Visualising War website.  

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin 

In this episode, Alice talks to Prof. Julian Wright, a historian of modern Europe and Head of the Department of Humanities at Northumbria University. Julian specialises in French intellectual, political and cultural history, but more broadly he is fascinated by the idea and experience of time. With colleagues from other disciplines, he has just published a book called Time on a Human Scale: Experiencing the Present in Europe, 1860-1930, which prompts historians who are reconstructing the past to look more closely at how people experienced, understood and articulated the times through which they lived.

Julian has recently launched a related research project, looking at the experiences of ordinary people who were living 'outside of time' in the era of the Second World War. He is interested in how the war disrupted everyday practices and, with that, people’s perceptions of time; and also in how people tried to cope with this, establishing new rhythms and seeing, feeling, measuring and trying to control time differently, whether they were living under siege, in prison camps or living in secrecy in occupied Europe. Our perception of time has a huge impact on how we visualise everything else, so Julian’s research is hugely interesting to the Visualising War project. 

In the podcast, Julian discusses some of the ways in which wars cause 'temporal dislocation', not only by cutting people off from the normal rhythms of life in the present but also by severing links to the past and making it difficult to visualise the future. This sits at odds with the kinds of storytelling we often want to do, about life in general and wars in particular: we like to identify beginnings and work towards endings, demarcating different time periods and charting progress on a journey. Julian talks about the narrative strategies that different people adopted in diaries and correspondence during WWII, to cope with their experience of 'living outside time' - and the ways in which the disruption of time also became a story in itself. We reflect on the choices people had, between enduring the grim present and hoping for an invisible future, and the blurred boundaries between 'wartime' and 'peacetime'. The podcast ends with some discussion of how children experienced and narrated temporal dislocation during WWII; and Julian reflects on how WWII is taught to children today (with a focus on explosive moments and decisive events) and what might be gained from more emphasis on how people experienced the present/time itself. 

Among other questions, Alice asked:

• how easy/difficult is it to reconstruct how people experienced the present during the Second World War, and why try?
• what is 'temporal dislocation' and what are its impacts?
• how did people in different circumstances (e.g. POWs, women on the home front, resistance fighters) respond to temporal disruptions and try to regain some control?
• can we see changes in the ways in which time was narrated (not just experienced), and what can this tell us?
• how might the study of temporal dislocation and people's experiences of the present during WWII help us understand and visualise the impacts of war in general?

We hope you enjoy the episode! For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please have a look on the University of St Andrews Visualising War website.  

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin 

This week Alice and Nicolas return to the Imperial War Museum, with the second episode of our mini-series on the recently redesigned WWI, WWII and Holocaust Galleries. Last episode focussed on the WWI Galleries; in this episode we take a closer look at the WWII and Holocaust Galleries, which open to the public on the 20th of October. 

Among our guests we welcome back Vikki Hawkins and Kate Clements, the curators of the WWII Galleries; and we also have with us James Bulgin, the content lead for the Holocaust Gallery. They give us exclusive and in-depth insight into the design and aims of the galleries, the planning process, and the spectacular and often poignant objects which visitors are able to see and experience  first hand, many for the very first time, from the UK and all over the world. 

Among other topics, we discuss 

• how our ways of visualising WWII and the Holocaust have changed over the past decades and how those changes are reflected in the design of the galleries 
• what sorts of objects are visible at the galleries and what kinds of stories these objects can tell us 
• wide-spread myths about WWII and the Holocaust which the new galleries seek to challenge 
• the responsibilities involved in visualising such highly sensitive topics as the WWII and the Holocaust, and what effect the stories we tell about these events have had and might have on us 
• the challenges involved in presenting a global conflict in all its diversity, while making ample room for the many personal voices from all over the world to be heard 
• ways to make objects tell those personal stories and prompt us to engage into a dialogue with them and - through them - with each other 
• James’, Vikki’s and Kate’s favourite objects, and 
• how the WWII and Holocaust Galleries fit into the IWM’s representation of war and conflict more broadly 

We hope you enjoy the episode! 
 
Listeners who want to see some of the objects mentioned by Kate and Vikki can read about them in this blog. For a version of our podcast with close captions, please listen here. Also, if you haven't heard it already don't forget to check out the first episode of this two-part mini series, in which we discuss the IWM’s recently redesigned WWI Galleries.

To find out more about the WWI, WWII and Holocaust Galleries, do visit the website of the Imperial War Museum. Also be sure to keep an eye out for the richly illustrated book accompanying the opening of the WWII Gallery and co-authored by our guests Vikki and Kate as well as Paul Cornish, with a foreword by Margaret MacMillan:Total War. A People's History of World War II (Thames&Hudson). James Bulgin has also written a brand new book on the Holocaust, featuring many personal stories and objects - it is available as an audiobook here.

 
For more information about individuals and their projects, access to resources and more, please have a look on the University of St Andrews Visualising War website.  

Music composed by Jonathan Young 
 Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin 

In this week’s podcast, Alice and Nicolas discuss strategy with Prof. Phillips O’Brien. Phil joined the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews in 2016 as Professor of Strategic Studies; he also directs the university’s interdisciplinary Institute for the Study of War and Strategy, which has some obvious areas of overlap with the Visualising War project. His interests in warfare and strategy range widely, with a particular focus on the early twentieth century. Most recently, in 2019 Phil finished his biography of Admiral William D Leahy, Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff and (as Phil puts it in the title) the ‘second most powerful man in the world’, who became de facto president of the United States when Roosevelt’s health started to fail. 

Strategic studies look at how decisions about war (including avoidance of war and concluding them through treaties) are made at the highest political level, and what influence those decisions have on the course of wars and battles. Strategy-making is an act of visualisation in itself; and of course it can be heavily influenced by past habits of visualising war.  We discuss the connection between strategy-making and storytelling, and how descriptions of strategy end up shaping the ways we visualise individual conflicts and war more broadly.  

Among other topics, we talk about: 

• The role of grand strategies in wars from antiquity via WWII to more recent conflicts in the Middle East – do grand strategies win wars? 
• How our understanding of and approaches to grand strategy have changed over time, and how they might develop in the future 
• What shapes generals’ and politicians’ strategic decision-making, including the influence of past war stories in promoting particular 'strategic' mindsets
• Whether you can teach and learn strategy, and the best ways to do that, including war gaming 
• How grand strategy is visualised and narrated, and how it coexists and sometimes competes with other narratives 
• Whether it makes sense to wage wars at all 

We hope you enjoy the episode!

For a version of our podcast with close captions, please listen here. You can find out more about Phil O’Brien’s work on his website at the University of St Andrews; also be sure to check out the website of the university’s Institute for the Study of War and Strategy.  

For more information about the Visualising War project, individuals and their projects, access to resources and more, please have a look on the University of St Andrews Visualising War website.  

Music composed by Jonathan Young 
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin 

This week Alice and Nicolas have a special treat for you: the first episode of a two-part mini-series on the Imperial War Museum’s recently redesigned WWI, WWII and Holocaust Galleries. The WWI Galleries are already open to the public and will be the focus of this week’s episode. In a couple of weeks, the second part of this mini-series will then take a closer look at the WWII and Holocaust Galleries, which will open on the 20th of October 2021.

With us on the show today are Sir Hew Strachan, a world-leading authority on Britain’s military history and WWI in particular, and academic advisor on the 2014 design of the WWI Galleries; James Taylor, Assistant Director Narrative and Content at the Imperial War Museums; and Vicki Hawkins and Kate Clements, curators for the IWM's new WWII galleries. They give us exclusive insight into the planning and processes behind this enormous project of redesigning the galleries, which make thousands of objects come to life, many for the first time.

Among other topics, we discuss

–      the influence of wide-spread myths about WWI, the need to bust those myths and the best ways to do that

–      the collaboration between curators and academic advisors and trustees

–      the history and development of the Imperial War Museum and its approach to narrating past and present conflicts

–      the challenges involved in presenting a global conflict in all its diversity, doing justice to its impact on the home front just as much as to the events and suffering in so many different theatres of war across the world

–      the challenges of making individual, personal voices heard while setting them in their global context

–      the processes of selecting objects and the best ways to narrate their story

–      James, Hew, Vicki and Kate’s favourite objects, and

–      how the work on the WWI galleries has influenced the design of the WWII and Holocaust galleries

We hope you enjoy the episode!
 
For a version of our podcast with close captions, please listen here. To find out more about the IWM's WWI, WWII and Holocaust Galleries, do visit the website of the Imperial War Museum and for more background about modern wars and conflicts, be sure to tune in to James Taylor’s new podcast series, Conflict of Interest.

For more information about individuals and their projects, access to resources and more, please have a look on the University of St Andrews Visualising War website. 

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin

In this episode, Alice talks to acclaimed composer Dr Anthony Ritchie about his oratorio 'Gallipoli to the Somme', which was commissioned for the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra and City Choir Dunedin as part of the centenary commemorations of the First World War. Also joining us is Dr Kate Kennedy, a musician, librettist and expert on the poetry and songs of WW1. Both have lots to say about how music can deepen our understanding of war and its impacts. 

Kate has recently published a biography of the poet and composer Ivor Gurney, and that gets us chatting about the mix of high-brow poetry and more bawdy trench song which have together shaped our habits of visualising the First World War.  A soldier during the war, Gurney suffered a series of breakdowns and spent his last fifteen years confined to a mental asylum. The songs he composed reflect real tensions in the ways in which he and his contemporaries regarded the war, for example by undercutting celebratory verses with disturbing harmonies that evoke violence and trauma.

Anthony's oratorio similarly plays with ironic contrasts between words and music, making use of silence as well as well-known musical quotations to weave a narrative about the First World War that captures many perspectives. Based on Alexander Aitken's book 'Gallipoli to the Somme', the oratorio includes a Maori war song, German Lieder, contemporary folk songs, a battle plan set to music, and the words attributed to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first President of the Republic of Turkey, inscribed on the Ari Burnu Memorial, Gallipoli. 

The composition process got Anthony thinking about the purpose of performing war history; the most effective ways to represent war in music and words; what it means to commemorate war and the dangers of distorting reality to make war more manageable for audiences; and how commemorations can critique as well as celebrate past conflicts. Among other questions, Alice asked:

• how differently is WW1 remembered in New Zealand compared with elsewhere?
• what forms of commemoration or storytelling dominate our habits of visualising WW1?
• what impact did centenary commemorations have on how we view this well-known conflict?
• what different musical responses to WW1 have there been over the last century?
• what challenges and opportunities do composers wrestle with when representing war in music?
• what musical styles did Anthony adopt in his oratorio, Gallipoli to the Somme, and why?
• how might this oratorio change or develop the ways in which we look back on WW1 today?

We hope you enjoy the episode! You can listen to the whole of Anthony's oratorio 'Gallipoli to the Somme' here; it is one of the most moving and thought-provoking representations of the First World War in existence. Kate's latest book, 'Dweller in Shadows: A Life of Ivor Gurney', is also a tour de force, and will make you want to dive deeper into Gurney's works; you can purchase it here.

For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please have a look on the University of St Andrews Visualising War website.  

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin