Visualising War and Peace

In this episode, Alice and Nicolas interview Prof. Anders Engberg-Pedersen, Professor of Comparative Literature  at the University of Southern Denmark. Anders is the author of Empire of Chance, published in 2015, which argues that the Napoleonic Wars not only changed the nature of warfare but also revolutionised people's understanding of chance, contingency and probability, inspiring a new discourse of knowledge. He has also edited volumes on Literature and Cartography, exploring how different kinds of texts visualise space, and Visualizing War: Emotions, Technologies, Communities, which explores the emotional language of images of war, and how they build emotional communities as well as impacting on individuals' emotions.

In the podcast, we talk about the impact which war has on culture and society, as well as the impact which culture and society have on war. Anders explains that the scale of the Napoleonic Wars resulted in a shift in how comprehensible people thought war was, with a move from universal principles, geometric representations and scientific discussions to an emphasis on chaos, uncertainty and the fog of war. This was felt in literature as well as military theory, with authors like Balzac, Stendhal and Tolstoy reflecting on the difficulties of describing war and opting to narrate individual perspectives alongside - or instead of - sweeping panoramas. Anders also discusses the origins of wargaming in the Napoleonic period, and the ways in which wargaming ever since has trained people's emotions as well as their physical and cognitive skills. Along the way, he reflects on the complex emotional impact of many different visual images of war, and the ways in which militaries often co-opt the language of art to talk about war as a creative endeavour, full of design. War shapes knowledge and narrative forms, and they in turn shape how war is visualised and pursued. 

Among other questions, we asked Anders:

• How and why did concepts of war shift in the Napoleonic era?
• In what sense did war become a 'problem of knowledge', with uncertainty outweighing certainty?
• How did these changes in war itself and the way it was visualised affect how people wrote about it and trends in representation? What new 'poetics of war' emerged? And what media came to dominate?
• In what sense do representations of war like maps and virtual reality games act simulate war itself, enabling readers to immerse themselves rather than just visualising from afar?
• What emotional impact do representations of war in different media have on individuals and communities? And to what use are they put?

Anders' insights into the complex relationship between war, knowledge and narrative touch on issues that go right to the heart of the Visualising War project. 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 interviews historian Dr Omar Mohammed, founder of the acclaimed Mosul Eye blog. When ISIS captured Mosul in 2014, Omar began posting regular updates to keep people informed and to counter misinformation – and his blog became a vital source of information both for those within the city and the wider world. He posted regularly throughout the occupation and liberation of Mosul, and has since turned his attention to Mosul’s recovery, using the blog to promote cross-cultural understanding as well as raising Mosul’s profile internationally. Mosul Eye has a lot to teach us about representations of conflict, particularly those that are produced while a war is ongoing, and it is a real testament to what the public documentation of a war can achieve, in the aftermath as well as during a conflict.

In the podcast, Omar explains that he began keeping a diary to document what life was like on the ground during conflict after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. However, it was only in 2014 when ISIS/Daesh captured Mosul, that he started blogging publicly, with no idea at the time how long his blog - or the occupation - would last. As a historian, he wanted to provide the people of Mosul and wider audiences with accurate accounts of events as they were unfolding in real time; but he also used the blog to preserve the names of victims and build up a reliable record for posterity, so that future generations could understand what went on.  Crucially, his blog posts narrated many small, everyday details, painting a holistic picture of the conflict rather than focusing on major events. His correction of fake news and exposure of atrocities meant that he and the blog were targeted by Daesh, but he persevered despite the risks, viewing his writing as a way to fight back. 

Over time, Mosul Eye became so well known that major news organisations turned to it to verify or flesh out their stories, and Omar was able to leverage the growing influence he had to help rescue people and families from the city and collect books for the University's stricken library. Since Mosul's liberation, Omar has used his position to put Mosul on the global map in positive ways, building bridges between different communities and kick-starting a major tree-planting programme, to help the people of Mosul visualise a greener, more peaceful future and to connect them to wider efforts to address climate change. His blog has helped him and others to grasp the profound and sometimes unseen destruction that war brings; but it also testifies to the power of history writing and digital media to promote peace, healing and renewal.
 
Among other questions, Alice asked:

• what prompted Omar to begin blogging as 'Mosul Eye' in 2014 and what his initial goal was
• what aspects of the occupation and liberation he decided to focus on, and why
• how the people of Mosul, the media and the wider international community responded to Mosul Eye
• what role his blog played in the 'information war' which accompanies conflict in the digital age
• how different live blogging is from writing the history of a conflict with the benefit of hindsight
• what role blogging can play in helping people visualise peace/renewal as well as war

We hope you enjoy the episode! To find out more about Mosul Eye, please visit the website. 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 

‘The non-violent Syrian uprising that turned into an armed conflict was born digital and networked from the very moment an unarmed activist used a smartphone camera to shoot while an armed man raised his gun to shoot at him.’ Donatella della Ratta, Shooting a Revolution: Visual Media and Warfare in Syria (2018).

In this week's episode, Alice and Nicolas interview Dr Donatella della Ratta, Associate Professor of Communications and Media Studies at John Cabot University in Rome. Donatella specialises in Arabic-speaking media. She lived in Damascus from 2007 to 2011, so Syrian media became a particular area of focus for her – and particularly the use made of iphones, youtube and online media to document what was happening as civil protests turned to civil war from 2011 onwards. She has professional experience as a journalist and TV producer, and managed the Arabic speaking community of the international NGO Creative Commons from 2008-2013. Alongside her expertise in media, Donatella is interested in storytelling across different art forms. She has curated several art exhibitions and film programmes on Syria, and she co-founded ‘Syria Untold’, an online platform for independent writers to share stories about peace and war in Syria which might otherwise be unheard.

In the podcast, we talk about the impact which the so-called 'digital revolution' has had on how people experience, communicate, visualise and even conduct war. Donatella discusses the rise of citizen journalism and hand-held film-making as new ways to document and communicate conflicts as they unfold; but we also reflect on more sinister developments such as the use of social media to spread misinformation and generate violence. As Donatella puts it in her book Shooting a Revolution, 'Syria is the first fully developed networked battleground in which the technological infrastructure supporting practices of uploading, sharing and remixing, together with the human network of individuals engaged in those practices, have become dramatically implicated in the production and reproduction of violence.' We discuss the increased visibility of modern conflict, but also the role played by social media organisations in preserving, censoring and deleting content - which can limit our collective memory of individual conflicts and our wider habits of visualising war. Ending on a more upbeat note, we talk about the ways in which campaigners and activists can harness blogs and other forms of digital media to broaden public understanding of conflict and its impacts. 

Among other questions, we asked Donatella:

• compared with traditional media, what impact can digital media have on how conflicts are reported, represented and understood?
• when peaceful protests turned violent in Syria, what use did people make of digital media and why?
• in what ways can digital media drive (and not just document) conflict?  
• what role might social media providers play in shaping current and future habits of visualising war?
• how did the rise of citizen journalism in Syria turn into a thriving new film industry?
• how can the publication of blogs via online platforms like Syria Untold broaden our habits of visualising war?

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 and Nicolas interview Dr Frank Möller, a researcher at the Tampere Peace Research Institute, Finland. Frank studies peace photography - both how photography can represent peace, and how such representations can contribute to peace. He has published several books on this topic, including Visual Peace: Images, Spectatorship and the Politics of Violence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Peace Photography  (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). He also leads a project on 'peace videography' and is co-founder of https://www.imageandpeace.com, a hub for researchers, artists and anyone interested in the link between visual culture and peace. 

In the podcast, we ask Frank what distinguishes 'peace photography' from other kinds of photography. That gets us talking about the long tradition of war photography, 'anti-war' photography, and the tendency to define and represent peace in relation to war - for example, by visualising peace through images of aftermath or post-conflict reconciliation and reconstruction. Frank argues for a broader approach to peace photography, and discusses the power of images of 'everyday peace' even in the midst of a war. He argues that if we can capture images of everyday peaceful practices, their momentum might grow and they might go on to generate more peaceful practices in turn. We also talk about the role that images of peace can play in mediation processes, through 'active looking'. As Frank puts it in one of his books, 'images reflect the world; in order to change the world, we need to change the images we see.' 

Among other questions, we asked Frank:

• is it easier to represent war than peace - or, at least, to represent cliches of war and peace?
• why is there no easily recognised tradition of 'peace photography' as there is for war photography?
• what role does photography play alongside other media (texts, films, works of art, etc) in shaping our habits of visualising war and peace?
• how can efforts to represent or visualise 'pockets' or 'islands' of everyday peace engender more peaceful practices in the wider world? How can we build peace with images?

We hope you enjoy the episode! For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link.

To find out more about Frank's work, you can visit his project website where he invites anyone interested in building peace with images to get involved.  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 interviews a journalist from Afghanistan about the events of August 2021, when the Taliban seized control of the country. They discuss the complex series of conflicts and international interventions that led up to the Taliban takeover, going back over several decades, and the ways in which wars of the past have been represented and (mis)understood. They also talk about the importance of hearing from local voices, not just international journalists and politicians, in making sense of Afghanistan's past and present; and the urgent need to listen to local voices for future conflict resolution and peacebuilding. 

This episode was recorded on 25th August, 2021. Out of concern for his safety, we are not publishing the journalist's name.

For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about our project, 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 episode, Alice talks to Dr Emily Mayhew, a historian of medicine at Imperial College, London. Emily specialises in the study of severe casualty - its infliction, treatment and long-term outcomes in 20th and 21st century warfare. Recently, she has worked particularly closely with researchers and staff at the Royal British Legion Centre for Blast Injury Studies, based at Imperial College, and she is part of the team that put together the ground-breaking Paediatric Blast Injury Field Manual. She has published a trilogy of books on war wounds from WW1 to Afghanistan: 'Wounded: the Long Journey Home from the Great War', 'The Guinea Pig Club: Archibald McIndoe and the RAF in World War Two', and 'A Heavy Reckoning: War, Medicine and Survivial in Afghanistan and Beyond'. In the podcast we also talk about her latest book, 'The Four Horsemen: War, Pestilence, Famine and Death, and the Hope of a New Age'.

The episode begins with Emily discussing the kinds of wounds that became a common feature of the two World Wars, what those wounds can tell us about the political and military strategies that were being followed, and how medical science adapted to treat them. With advances in medical practice, more and more servicemen ended up surviving their wounds - and that gets us talking about public perceptions of injury and disability. In contrast to soldiers who lost limbs during WW1, for example, pilots who survived terrible burns during WW2 often found themselves feted by an admiring public. That gets us thinking about the experience of more recent veterans, from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the profound effects that blast injuries have long after the blast itself. Emily touches on the foundation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the birth of humanitarianism - and what happened in 2016 in Mosul, when for the first time in its history the Red Cross did not get involved. We discuss the role of historians alongside medics and humanitarian organisations in providing a line of defence against War, Pestilence, Famine and Death - and how valuable those ancient Horsemen are in helping us visualise what is at stake. Along the way, Emily stresses the disproportionate impact of war and man-made famines on children - the often unseen victims of conflict.
 
Among other questions, Alice asked: 

• how do wounds help us visualise war itself?
• what 'iconic' wounds do we associate with different wars, and why?
• what wounds remain less visible, or less understood?
• how has the general public responded to war wounds over time, and what has shaped their understanding and attitudes?
• how interconnected is the history of warfare and the history of medicine?
• what difference does it make to visualise war as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? 
• how optimistic should we feel about our ability to keep those Horsemen at bay in future? 

We hope you enjoy the episode!

*Please note: this episode was recorded in spring 2021, before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. Some references to Afghanistan are therefore out of date.

For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. 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 episode, Alice and Nicolas talk to producer and director Sam Taplin about representations of war in TV documentaries. Sam has worked in a variety of genres, from factual programmes to drama documentaries. He has credits with Channel 4, Channel 5, Netflix, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic and PBS, among others, and has particularly specialised in documentaries on the Second World War. He talks about the pragmatics of documentary making, what kinds of audiences different production companies are trying to engage, and what difference all of that makes to the war stories they tell. 

In the podcast, we chat about why some wars lend themselves more to documentary making than others: the lack of visuals and the challenges of reconstructing ancient and medieval battle scenes make them less popular with directors, for example, while the attritional grind of WW1 and the lack of 'action' in the Cold War tend to put both producers and audiences off. The Second World War, by contrast, lends itself more to engaging storytelling, with a mix of human endeavour and technological innovation, an easily identifiable 'baddie', and a succession of dramas on land, sea and air. This gets us talking about the 'narrative arcs' which documentaries often try to create around historical events, particularly when channels are trying to keep audiences beyond the next ad break. We discuss how selective the storytelling sometimes is, and how the desire to narrate crisis and climax can distort historical reality. Sam reflects on the tension between entertainment and education, and we talk about the influence which historical documentaries can have in cementing ideas about what different wars were like, what triggered or prolonged them, and how they were resolved.  We also chat about the limits of representation: for example, how much of the horrors of war are production companies or audiences willing to visualise?

Among other questions, we asked Sam: 

• how popular are war documentaries with TV production companies and audiences, and which wars are people most interested in?
• who/what decides which aspects of a conflict a documentary should focus on? (audience expectations, the need to 'entertain', the need for a new 'angle', academic input, etc?)
• what aspects of conflict are less often represented, and why? 
• how have war documentaries changed over time, and what trends might we expect in future?
• what impact do war documentaries have today on our habits of visualising war?

We hope you enjoy the episode!

*Please note: this episode was recorded in spring 2021, before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. Some references to Afghanistan are therefore out of date.

For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. 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 episode, Alice interviews Anthony Borden, Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Founded 30 years ago, the IWPR thinks globally but works locally, fostering grassroots journalism in many different parts of the world. Via training, mentoring and support on the ground, it empowers local journalists and civil society groups to tackle disinformation and to inform, educate and mobilise their own communities. Its mission is to 'give voice to people at the frontlines of conflict and transition to help them drive change'.

Alice and Tony chat about the IWPR's history - how it came into being in the 1990s during the wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia, and then expanded in the aftermath of 9/11. They discuss how war and peace reporting has changed over the years, particularly with the advent of digital media and the rise of citizen journalism. Fake news and the increasing 'fog of war' makes accurate, reliable reporting more important than ever, but journalists operate in increasingly hostile environments, with the tracking of their digital 'footprints' often adding to physical threats on the ground. Tony explains what impact mentoring by experienced journalists can have in supporting journalists and activists who are working in challenging environments and in encouraging new voices to emerge. He reveals that Malala Yousafzai first started out as a trainee on the IWPR's Open Minds project, before becoming a trainer herself. As the episode goes on, he reflects on the vital role that good journalism can play, not only in reporting accurately on wars but in reducing the drivers of conflict.  As he puts it, the principles of good journalism - facts, balance, fairness and decency of tone - are foundational tools in conflict resolution.
 
Among other questions, Alice asked: 

• what inspired the foundation of the IWPR, and how was its mission defined?
• what role can or should journalism play in conflict zones and peace processes?
• what difference does it make to empower marginalised voices during conflicts and periods of transition? And what risks do we face if we do not support voices on the ground to have their say and drive change ?
• how might war and peace reporting change in the coming decades?
• what work will the IWPR be prioritising to meet the challenges of the future and continue supporting war and peace reporting around the world?

We hope you enjoy the episode!

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

You can find out more about the work of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting on their website. As an NGO, they rely on fundraising to keep their important work going; so if you have been inspired by what you have heard, please do consider pressing the red 'donate' button to contribute. 

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 and Nicolas interview Ewan Downie, an actor, writer, director and co-founder of the Company of Wolves, a laboratory theatre company whose mission is to make compelling drama ‘that speaks directly to the times in which we live’.  Ewan recently staged a one-man show that explored the story of Achilles, an ancient Greek warrior made famous by Homer's epic poem The Iliad, which tells the story of the Trojan War - a topic we touched on in last week's podcast with NMT Automatics.

In this episode we talk about why the character of Achilles has always fascinated people and what kind of hero he actually is. As Ewan puts it, 'Setting Achilles on an army is a bit like a drone strike, nobody else has a chance - and yet we call this person a hero.' That gets us chatting about what we value in warriors, and what our heroisation of figures like Achilles can tell us about our wider habits of visualising and justifying acts of war. We also discuss the role that myths and archetypes can play in helping us understand our own impulses and behaviours - and how Ewan's representation of Achilles got audiences asking huge questions like 'why do we still kill each other?' In Ewan's words, mythology is a great tool in shaking us up and making us wonder who we are and what we want to be.  

Among other questions, we asked:

• How influential are ancient war stories on modern habits of visualising war?
• What aspects of Achilles' story and character did Ewan want to emphasise, and why?
• How have audiences responded to Ewan's harrowing representation of Achilles' rage and grief?
• Could his deconstruction of the 'hero' Achilles be seen as 'anti war'?
• What impact does he think theatre can have on how we see, question and understand conflict across time?

We hope you enjoy the episode!

For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. You can find out more about Ewan's work and find clips of his plays on the Company of Wolves website.

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 and Nicolas interview members of NMT Automatics, a theatre company which specialises in updating ancient myths for modern audiences. Co-founders Jennie Dunne and Jonathan Young have been working with director Andres Velasquez and dramaturg Mairin O'Hagan to develop a new play, Tempus Fugit: Troy and Us, which weaves together an Ancient Greek war story from Homer's Iliad with the tale of a modern military couple, Alec and Bea. The Visualising War project has been feeding into their research process, so we enjoyed catching up with them to find out how the play has evolved.

In the podcast, we talk about how ancient models of military heroism can both help and hamper our visualisations of war today, and the NMTA team explain how they use ancient characters like Hector, Achilles, Ajax and Andromache to raise important questions about how war is imagined and experienced in the 21st century. They talk about the role that theatre and storytelling can play in deepening understanding of what soldiers, civilians and families go through, and how their play ended up focusing on the experiences of the military spouse. As they explain, what partners of serving soldiers go through is not discussed very often; but those partners spend a lot of time trying to visualise the wars which their loved ones are fighting in or preparing for, so they offer a fascinating perspective from which to explore wider habits of visualising war. Along the way, we chat about the cliches that often crop up when war is represented on stage and screen, and the important work that plays like Tempus Fugit can do in challenging assumptions and offering different viewpoints.

Among other questions, we asked: 

• What films/war stories shaped their habits of visualising war in the past? 
• What cliches about conflict do stage and screen dramatisations tend to reinforce? And what role can theatre play in challenging those cliches?
• What can ancient war stories bring to modern understandings of war and conflict?
• What connections do they draw between the experiences of Hector and Andromache in the Trojan war and modern conflict/military culture as experienced by Alex and Bea?
• Why did they end up focusing on military spouses/partners, and what does that angle bring to the wider study of war?
• What impact do they hope their new play, Tempus Fugit, will have on military and civilian audiences?

We hope you enjoy the episode!

For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. To find out more about the wider research we have been doing into dramatisations of war on stage and screen, you can read this blog.

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