OBS! Detta seminarium hålls på engelska.

This event is co-organized with the project Beyond Sacred/Secular Cities - Exploring Politics of Memory, Space, and Religion in Middle Eastern Nationalisms.

An often-posed question with regards to conflict-affected societies dealing with a difficult past is; 'does heritage hurt or heal?' In this paper we propose a framework of difficult heritage of conflict with the ambition to increase our knowledge of where, when and how such cultural heritage enables or disables conflict transformation. We suggest that cultural heritage of conflict is a site for agency and transformation. First, we delineate two main affective categories: heritage that hurts and heritage that heals. Second, we introduce the concept of heritagization agency and their use of various strategies to produce heritage. The paper unpacks these categories and illustrates their conceptual power in relation to the memoryscape of the Israeli city of Haifa, which holds a multilayered range of heritage sites and a number of heritagization actors.

Annika Björkdahl is professor at the Department of Political Science, Lund University. Her research includes international and local peacebuilding with a particular focus on urban peacebuilding, and gender and transitional justice and she is currently directing four research projects: Troubling Testimonies: Women's Narratives of War (The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Science, 2020–2023), Vulnerable Cities (FORMAS 2016–2020); The Politics of Memory (The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Science, 2016–2019) and Cultural Heritage of Conflict: Peacebuilding and the Politics of Memory, (Swedish Research Council, 2016–2019. 

Hybrid Seminar

The talk is held at CMES, Finngatan 16 in Lund. If you are not able to attend in-person, there is an option to attend via Zoom. Please register here for Zoom attendance: https://lu-se.zoom.us/meeting/register/u50pdOqtrTkoHNxEjKcKdRxkFNDm2oGkEdc-

This event is part of the spring 2023 CMES seminar series. For more information see the full program.