Art in Peace and Reconciliation: A Transnational Perspective

Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Stellenbosch University

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University. She holds the SARChI Chair on “Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma”. She has published extensively on victims and perpetrators’ responses to historical trauma and her books include the award-winning ‘A Human Being Died that Night: A Story of Forgiveness’, ‘Narrating our Healing: Perspectives on Healing Trauma’. Among her awards are honorary degrees: Doctor of Laws from Rhodes University; Doctor of Theology from the Friedrich-Schiller University; Doctor of Laws from Holy Cross College in Massachusetts. Since 2017, she has been serving as Research Advisor and Global Scholar at Queen’s University, Belfast, affiliated with the Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. She chaired the Human Rights Violations Committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the Western Cape, an experience that has informed her scholarly work and public engagement.

Professor Shaun Ewen, The University of Melbourne and King’s College London

Professor Shaun Ewen is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous) and Foundation Director of the Melbourne Poche Centre for Indigenous Health at The University of Melbourne, and visiting Professor of Indigenous Health and Leadership at King’s College London. He is also convenor of the ACU’s Commonwealth Peace & Reconciliation Network. In his role as Pro Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ewen has responsibility for institutional policy, strategy and advice in relation to all aspects of Indigenous higher education. Professor Ewen has a clinical background in physiotherapy and holds postgraduate qualifications in international relations and education. His area of research expertise relates to Indigenous health and health professional education.

Professor John Brewer, Queen’s University, Belfast

John D Brewer is Professor of Post Conflict Studies in the Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. He is Honorary Professor Extraordinary at Stellenbosch University (2017).  He was awarded an honorary DSocSci from Brunel University in 2013 for services to social science and the sociology of peace processes. He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy (2004), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2008), a Fellow in the Academy of Social Sciences (2003) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (1998). In 2007-2008 he was a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow. He regularly teaches peace and reconciliation workshops in Sri Lanka and was active in the Northern Irish peace process facilitating the Faith in a Brighter Future Group of leading ecumenical churchmen and women. He has also been involved as a policy advisor on policing reform in South Africa and Northern Ireland.

Dr Joanna Newman MBE, The Association of Commonwealth Universities

Dr Joanna Newman is Chief Executive and Secretary General of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU). Prior to joining the ACU in April 2017, Joanna was Vice-Principal (International) at King’s College London. Her previous positions include Director of the UK Higher Education International Unit (now known as Universities UK International) and Head of Higher Education at the British Library. Joanna remains a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of History at King’s College London and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Southampton. She has also taught history at University College London and the University of Warwick. In 2014, Joanna was awarded an MBE in recognition of her work promoting British higher education internationally.

Professor Willem de Villiers, Stellenbosch University

Wim de Villiers is the Rector and Vice-Chancellor of Stellenbosch University and has a long history of working in higher education as a top-level administrator having been the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at UCT, the Chief Administrative Officer at University of Kentucky College of Medicine as well as the Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology at the University of Kentucky.  He is skilled in Healthcare Consulting, Clinical Research, Medical Education, Life Sciences, and Medicine.  A strong education professional with a MHCM focused in Health/Health Care Administration/Management from Harvard University School of Public Health. Wim de Villiers is a board-certified gastroenterologist with a PhD in macrophage immunology from Oxford University and has clinical and research expertise in Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

Allely Albert, Queen’s University, Belfast

Allely Albert is a PhD student at the School of Law at Queen's University Belfast, where she is the recipient of a Postgraduate Research Studentship and is additionally associated with the Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice and the Institute of Irish Studies. Her research focuses on ex-prisoner involvement in community-based restorative justice efforts in Northern Ireland and the United States, examining the impact of ex-prisoner leadership on the micro-dynamics of restorative processes and the mechanisms involved in wider societal peacebuilding. She earned an MA in Conflict Transformation and Social Justice, also from Queen’s University, emphasising similar themes. Beyond her university degrees, Allely also holds a number of certifications related to restorative justice, including certifications in mediation, victim-offender dialogue, and restorative practice. 

Judith Fullerton, Queen’s University, Belfast

Judith Fullerton is a doctoral student at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice within Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is presently researching the topic of Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma in Northern Ireland which is an investigation into the manifestations of trauma on social groups and collective identities. Her interests are literature within the field of Transitional Justice, dealing with the legacies of the past and Victimhood, especially the role that victims and perpetrators can play in helping societies recover from the trauma of conflict. 

Refiloe Lepere

Refiloe Lepere is a writer, award-winning director, playwright, drama therapist and academic. She is a Ford Foundation Fellow and Think Fellow. In her creations, she weaves history, statistics and personal narrative to address issues of social (in)justice, intersectional identities and black experiences. Her plays have been performed in multiple international stages. Her two plays, ‘Heading Out’ (2017) and ‘Between Sisters’ (2018), were shortlisted as Best Public Performance in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Awards. She writes for both theatre and radio. Refiloe travels across the country performing, presenting, and facilitating workshops on gender equality, race and diversity and writing. 

Manosa Nthunya, University of the Witwatersrand

Manosa is a PhD candidate in Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand University. He has an interest in Postcolonial literature, Psychoanalysis and Queer theory.

Lerato Machetela, Stellenbosch University

Lerato Machetela is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and a PhD student in Psychology. Her research, entitled ‘The Exploration of Trauma Amongst Two Generations in Jagersfontein, Post-Apartheid’, stems from her work as a clinical psychologist in Jagersfontein, where she established a Gumboots dance group as a psycho-edutainment program for the male youth in this community. Her study seeks to broaden the conceptualisation of trauma to consider issues of the ‘everyday’ reality of life among young people born after the fall of apartheid, and to explore the impact of everyday experiences of humiliation and depravity in young people's sense of identity. To this extent, she brings intersectionality to her study and engages meaningfully with the notion of socially-responsive research. She has been recognised for her leadership in social responsiveness and interviewed widely on several networks.

Alex Wright, The Association of Commonwealth Universities

Alex Wright is Head of Policy and Public Affairs at the Association of Commonwealth Universities. He leads the ACU’s work on higher education and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including political engagement with the Commonwealth and United Nations. He also coordinates the ACU’s policy networks on Peace and Reconciliation and Climate Resilience, which encourage universities to take action to directly address specific SDGs. Before joining the ACU, Alex worked as an independent consultant specialising in international education policy and advocacy, Director of an NGO, and Education Advisor for the Commonwealth Secretariat. His experience includes developing and managing international development and education programmes, planning and delivering intergovernmental conferences, representing clients in international policy networks and processes, and advocacy around the SDGs.

Paul Gallagher, Queen’s University Belfast

Paul Gallagher (BSc (Hons) Psychological Trauma Studies & MA Conflict Transformation and Social Justice) is currently a third year PhD Research candidate at The Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, at Queen's University, Belfast (QUB). He is a current member of the Victims and Survivors Forum, which acts as an advisory body to the Commission for Victims and Survivors in Northern Ireland on matters relating to victims and survivors of the conflict. As a member of the WAVE Injured Group, Paul has been actively campaigning for a special pension for people, like himself, who were injured during the Troubles. He has recently delivered a module at QUB on ‘The Social and Political Aspects of Victimhood ‘ as part of the BSc Psychological Trauma Studies. Paul has also worked as a Citizen Educator at QUB and Ulster University, delivering tutorials to students in nursing, social work, medicine, and counselling, on the effects of the trauma.

Adam Levin, the University of the Witwatersrand

Adam Levin is currently serving as a postdoctoral research fellow at the African Centre for the Study of the United States which is based at the University of the Witwatersrand. His current research examines how works of African-American literature and South African literature can be used to instigate social and communal change amongst young readers and learners. His PhD research, which was undertaken at the University of Pretoria, deals with how works of Holocaust literature and post-apartheid literature provide different approaches to engaging with issues of historical trauma. His work has been most recently been published in Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History and a forthcoming edition of English Studies in Africa.

Dr. Kim Wale, University of Stellenbosch

Dr Kim Wale is a senior researcher at Studies in Historical Trauma and Transformation at the University of Stellenbosch. Her work focusses on collective memories of violence and oppression and their transgenerational repercussions. She is presently leading the analysis of a large dataset on memories of violence and transgenerational transmission of trauma in South Africa, one of the flagship research projects of Studies in Historical Trauma and Transformation, which is funded by the A W Mellon Foundation. She is author of the book South Africa's Struggle to Remember: Contested Memories of Squatter Resistance in the Western Cape published by Routledge in 2016. She is co-editor, with Pumla Gobodo Madikizela and Jeffrey Prager, of the collection Post-Conflict Hauntings: Transforming Memories of Historical Trauma published in 2020 by Palgrave Macmillan.

Professor Elena Isayev, University of Exeter

Elena Isayev is a historian and archaeologist focusing on migration, hospitality and displacement, which she has written about for the Red Cross and in her monograph Migration Mobility and Place in Ancient Italy (Cambridge 2017). She has also worked with colleagues in Palestine, of Campus in Camps and Decolonising Architecture, to understand and move beyond the cracks in the nation-state regime, exposing the role of culture and heritage. Currently leading the team of Imagining Futures through Un/Archived Pasts (an AHRC, GCRF Network+), she is also Professor of Ancient History and Place at the University of Exeter, UK.

Dr Nancy Rushohora, University of Stellenbosch

Dr Nancy Rushohora is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Studies in Historical Trauma and Transformation at Stellenbosch University. She holds a PhD in Historical Archaeology from the University of Pretoria (2016). Her research interests include archaeology of resistance, trauma, heritage, photographs and memory. Currently, she is working on the Majimaji War—a resistance against the German colonialism in Tanzania (1904-1908). She is particularly questioning the removal and restitution of human remains from Tanzania to Germany and engaging with the use of the war landscape, museum and memorials.

Dr Peter B Campbell, The British School at Rome

Dr Peter B Campbell is the Assistant Director for Archaeology at the British School at Rome. He has a PhD in Archaeology and his research examines community archaeology. He has directed archaeological projects in eight countries, primarily focusing on underwater sites. He is a co-investigator on the Imagining Futures through Un/Archived Pasts, an AHRC GCRF four-year project examining peace-building through local archiving practice.

Caryn Thandi Petersen, University of Warwick

Caryn Thandi Petersen is a Commonwealth Scholar from South Africa, currently completing her PhD at the University of Warwick in Sociology (Women and Gender). Her research focuses on the impacts and implications of decolonial activism on higher education in South Africa and the UK. She is interested in intersectional movements seeking to address colonial legacies and redress the politics of knowledge production. As a member of the Peace and Reconciliation Network with the ACU, Caryn aims to contribute to broader discussions on institutional reform through transformative justice initiatives. Along with her academic research, she is a features writer and performer with a background in the arts.

Dr. Rand T. Hazou, Massey University

Rand is theatre academic and facilitator with experience working across a variety of creative and community contexts. In 2004, he was commissioned by the UNDP to travel to the Occupied Territories in Palestine to run workshops for Palestinian youths. His research explores theatre that engages with issues of social justice. His research on Asylum Seeker and Refugee Theatre has been published in a series of international journal articles. In Aotearoa he has led teaching and creative projects engaging with both prison and aged-care communities. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Theatre at Massey University.

Professor Lindiwe Dovey, SOAS University of London

Lindiwe Dovey is Professor of Film and Screen Studies at SOAS University of London, and the Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded project “African Screen Worlds: Decolonising Film and Screen Studies” (www.screenworlds.org), which aims to make mainstream film studies and the film industry far more globally representative. Originally from South Africa, Lindiwe is passionate about African filmmaking in particular, and is the author of the books Curating Africa in the Age of Film Festivals (2015) and African Film and Literature (2009). As a film scholar, teacher, festival founder, curator, and filmmaker, Lindiwe believes in the importance of working simultaneously across theory, creative practice, and activism, and in the power of team work. She has been an active member of the Decolonising SOAS working group since 2016, and has been collaborating with colleagues around the world (e.g. in Sweden and Nigeria) to try to contribute to a more equitable higher education environment.  

Sakiru Adebayo, the University of the Witwatersrand

Sakiru Adebayo is currently completing his PhD as a THINK Doctoral Fellow in the Department of African Literature, University of the Witwatersrand. His PhD is on the portrayals of traumatic memories in African novels. He is broadly interested in questions of memory, trauma and melancholia in post-conflict African societies. He runs an active WIts/THINK memory reading group.

Dr Valence Silayo, Tumaini University Dar es Salaam College

Dr Valence Silayo is a lecturer in history, archaeology and heritage Management at Tumaini University Dar es Salaam College, Tanzania. He has sound knowledge and experience in archaeological and historical research, heritage management and community engagement. He has participated in several field works along the east African coast and northern Tanzania. As a young academician, Valence is flexible, enthusiastic, motivated and committed to the sustainable use of priceless heritage resources.

Mark J Kaplan, Grey Matter Media 

Mark J Kaplan is a politically engaged filmmaker who was held in solitary confinement and deported from Apartheid South Africa. He is an Emmy Award winner (The Lion’s Trail). International Awards include Best International Documentary at One World, 1999 (Where Truth Lies) and Award of Excellence, 2006, The Society for Visual Anthropology, USA, (Between Joyce and Remembrance). The Village Under The Forest received the Audience Award for Best South African documentary at The Encounters South African International Documentary Festival, 2013. There is a strong thread in Mark’s work exploring inter-generational trauma, memory and the pursuit of justice.

Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, University College London 

Prof. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh is Professor of Migration and Refugee Studies and Co-Director of the Migration Research Unit at University College London (UCL), where she is also the Director of the Refuge in a Moving World network at the UCL-Institute of Advanced Studies. Elena is jointly leading the Baddawi Camp Lab as part of the Imagining Futures through Un/Archived Pasts AHRC Network Plus project (funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council). She is also currently leading a number of research projects, including  Analysing South-South Humanitarian Responses to Displacement from Syria: Views from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey (www.southernresponses.org, funded by the European Research Council), and Local Community Experiences of and Responses to Displacement from Syria (www.refugeehosts.org, funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council). Drawing on a critical theoretical perspective, her work contributes to key debates surrounding refugees’ and local host community members’ responses to conflict-induced displacement; the nature of refugee-host-donor relations, and refugee-refugee relationality; and Southern-led humanitarian responses to forced migration. 

Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, Oxford University 

Yousif M. Qasmiyeh is jointly leading the Baddawi Camp Lab as part of the Imagining Futures through Un/Archived Pasts  AHRC Network Plus project (funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council); he is also the Writer-in-Residence of the AHRC-funded Refugee Hosts research project, the Arabic language researcher on the Prismatic Translation strand of the OWRI-funded Creative Multilingualism project, and Creative Encounters Editor of the Migration and Society journal. Yousif is a poet and translator who is completing his DPhil research at the University of Oxford’s English Faculty. His recent publications include ‘Writing the Camp’, ‘The Camp is Time’, and ‘Writing the Camp Archive’ (all published on Refugee Hosts), ‘Writing the Camp: Death, Dying and Dialects’ (in Refugee Imaginaries: Contemporary Research Across the Humanities), ‘Writing the Camp, Writing the Camp Archive: The case of Baddawi refugee camp’ (in Refuge in a Moving World), ‘At the Feast of Asylum’ (GeoHumanities), ‘If this is my face, so be it’ (Modern Poetry in Translation) and ‘Thresholds’ (Critical Quarterly).

Professor Howayda Al’Harithy, American University of Beirut (AUB)

Professor Howayda Al’Harithy is Professor of Architecture and Urbanism in the Department of Architecture and Design (ArD) at AUB. She joined AUB in 1994 and served as Chair of ArD from 2003-2006 and from 2009-2012. She was also a visiting professor at Harvard University, MIT, and Georgetown University. She is widely published with over 50 articles, book chapters, and reports in leading journals and refereed books. She is the editor of and contributor to Lessons in Post-War Reconstruction: Case Studies from Lebanon in the Aftermath of the 2006 War  (London and New York: Routledge, 2010) and recently co-authored the urban design studio monograph Post-war Recovery of Cultural Heritage Sites: Aleppo Taht al Qalaa (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 2019, with Jala Makhzoumi). She is the recipient of numerous grants from major international foundations, including the Kress Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, Andrew W Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the British Academy, and the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK.

Professor Kodzo Gavua, University of Ghana

Kodzo Gavua is an archaeologist and ethnographer who holds a PhD and Master of Arts degrees from the University of Calgary, Canada. He also earned a Master of Arts degree in International Affairs and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in Archaeology and Philosophy from the University of Ghana. Kodzo serves as an Associate Professor of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon, and researches the effects of cross-cultural interactions on Africa’s cultural heritage and economic development. He engages in public archaeology, anthropology of tourism, economic anthropology, art history, material culture studies, and museum studies. Gavua established and coordinates the A.G. Leventis Digital Resource Centre for African Culture at the University of Ghana.

Edwar Hanna, Syrbanism

Edwar is a social development practitioner and urbanist who has worked and studied in the MENA region, Europe and Asia. He has a specialised focus on the role of communication and urban dialogue as participatory tools for social justice and human rights. With an MSc in Development Planning and a previous BSc in Architecture, Edwar has an interdisciplinary approach to academia and action research. He has professional expertise in project management, capacity development, research, and community engagement; he has co-founded his own organisation, the Syria-focused urban activism platform ‘Syrbanism’. As Project Manager at C4D Support, an international development agency, he has led capacity building consultancies in Egypt, Nigeria, Lebanon and globally for NGOs and UN agencies such as UNICEF, UNESCO and UNFPA.

Mick Finch, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London

Mick Finch is an artist, whose recent research has been about the technical apparatus of the Warburg Haus. He is  P-I for the AHRC funded project,  A Vision for Europe: Academic Responsibility and Action in Times of Crises, with the Warburg Institute, and the Bilderfahrzeuge research group, examining the context of a radical WW2 photographic exhibition staged by the Warburg Institute. Outcomes of this project are an exhibition, Bilder Auf Wanderscaft at the Zentralinstitut in Munich, and the publication, Image Journeys: The Warburg Institute and a British Art History. In parallel to ImagingFutures  he is also working on T-Factor, an EU H2020  funded project with a budget of 8M Euros. Finch is currently Professor in Visual Art Practice at the Central Saint Martins at the University of the Arts, London. 

Professor Nomusa Makhubu, The University of Cape Town 

Nomusa Makhubu is an art historian and artist whose research focusses on art interventionism, popular culture and social engagement in African visual art.  She was the recipient of the ABSA L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award in 2006 and the Prix du Studio National des Arts Contemporain, Le Fresnoy in 2014. She received the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) African Humanities Program fellowship award and was selected to be an African Studies Association (ASA) Presidential fellow in 2016. In 2017, she was also a UCT-Harvard Mandela fellow at the Hutchins Centre for African and African American Research, Harvard university. In that same year, she was the First Runner Up for the Department of Science and Technology (DST) Women in Science Awards. Recognising the need for broader creative mentorship, collaborative practice and socially responsive arts, she started the Creative Knowledge Resources project.