Conflict, Memory, Displacement: Responding to the Refugee Crisis in the UK and Italy
The project explored how people in the UK and Italy make sense of international conflict and how this understanding shapes attitudes to those displaced by conflict. We examined the representation of conflict and of the impact of conflict through media representations, official and popular discourses, and institutional and citizen initiatives.
The aims of the research were to explore:
• how people in the UK and Italy use mainstream and social media to inform their understanding of conflicts, displacement and the role of political institutions, and how these understandings shape attitudes to displaced people.
• how displaced people memorialise conflict from afar and what impact have their processes of remembering had on understandings of global conflict.
• how creative methods can be used to articulate alternative accounts of conflicts, the asylum process and the role of political institutions.
The project, which concluded in November 2017, included:
- A survey about media use and understandings of global conflict;
- Analysis of media representations of global conflict;
- Memory and discussion work with people displaced by conflict;
- The creation of an online exhibition and theatrical script created in collaboration with people displaced by conflict.See here for more information about the methods we used.