Never Such Innnocence with Lady Lucy French

In this podcast Alice interviews Dr Jana Tabak, an Assistant Professor at the Department of International Relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. Jana’s work focuses on children’s experiences of conflict in both the global south and the global north, and also on the role that our conceptions of childhood play in our habits of visualising war – and, indeed, in how our habits of visualising war shape how we view children and childhoods. More broadly she is interested in children’s political subjecthood and their ‘political becoming’: how ideas of children get deployed in global politics, how children’s agency as political actors gets constrained by adult frameworks, and what children can contribute to politics (and particularly to discussions of war and peace) when mechanisms for their inclusion work better.

Together with Marshall Beier, Jana has edited two influential volumes on Children, Childhoods and Everyday Militarisms (in 2020) and on Childhoods in Peace and Conflict in 2021. These draw attention to the multiplicity of both real and imagined childhoods, and how different militarisms intersect with and inform different childhoods around the world. Some of Jana’s published work focuses particularly on representations and conceptions of child soldiering in different parts of the world. In 2020 she published a monograph called The Child and the World: Child-Soldiers and the Claim for Progress, along with a range of other articles on related topics; and her current project is looking specifically at recruitment of junior soldiers in the UK.

The episode begins with discussion of our norms of visualising children and childhood, particularly how concepts of children/childhood get constructed in and for global politics. Jana stresses that such habits tend to exclude children as political subjects in the present, while including them as potential citizens in the future. More worryingly still, Jana notes, the reduction of conceptions of childhood to one idealised model can end up 'othering' children whose childhoods (through no fault of their own) differ from standard/Western expectations.

We consider the tendency, when visualising children-in-war, to regard them as ‘passive skins’,  victims with no agency to shape their own fate; and we also ask how this shapes our understandings of war and conflict, not just views of children and/as victims. Jana helps us look critically at the many forms of militarism which touch different children's lives, and we spend some time considering how 'child soldiers' tend to be visualised, in comparison with junior recruits to (e.g.) the UK's armed forces. Along the way, Jana stresses the importance of doing research with children as co-producers of knowledge, and of exploring the blurred/maleable boundaries of both childhood and war.

We hope you find the discussion interesting. Paul dives deeper into these important topics in recent articles 'Trust but Verify' and 'AI and the future of warfare'.  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

This episode is a follow-up to an earlier conversation with Anne Lene Stein which focused on peace activism in Israel and Palestine.  We invited her back onto the podcast to share another important strand of research with us, based on her recent work with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

As several of our other episodes discuss, forced displacement is a recurring legacy of conflict all around the world. In recent years, wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ukraine, the DRC and Sudan (to name just a few) have displaced millions of people from their homes; and in recent months hundreds of thousands more people have been displaced within Gaza, sometimes multiple times. This is not a new phenomenon; as Anne underlines, Palestinians have been seeking sanctuary in many different places, for many years - including in Lebanon, where some Palestinians have been living as refugees for multiple generations.

Anne begins the conversation by explaining what drove so many Palestinian refugees to Lebanon in the first place, over 70 years ago; and how many continue to live in supposedly temporary refugee camps around the country. She describes the challenging living conditions in these camps, the lack of freedom and rights for their inhabitants, and the ways in which the camps are governed and controlled by both internal and external forces.

This leads to a particular focus of Anne's research: how young people, born and raised in these camps, construct their identities and visualise their futures. For many displaced Palestinians, retaining refugee status is crucial in holding on to the right to return home some day; but this comes with significant costs, perpetuating poverty and disenfranchisement. Anne discusses some of the ways in which young people in refugee camps in Lebanon try to overcome the stigma attached to being displaced, pushing back against dominant narratives; how they use different media and methods to imagine 'home' in new ways, overcoming the 'politics of temporality'; and how they employ everyday acts of resistance to exercise agency and take more control over their lives. This gets us talking about peace imaginaries as well as habits of visualising forced displacement.

We end the episode by considering what lessons we might learn from the experiences of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon as we seek better ways to support people newly displaced by conflict. As Anne underlines, we need to find political - not just humanitarian - solutions; and we should invest in solutions that maximise refugee rights and avoid re-victimising people.

We hope you find the discussion interesting. 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 podcast Alice interviews two guests, both based at the US Army War College and both researching AI-enabled military technologies. LTC Dr Paul Lushenko is the Director of Special Operations and a Faculty Instructor in the U.S. Army War College’s Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations. Paul has combined an academic career with regular military deployments, directing intelligence operations at the Battalion, Combined Task Force, and Joint Task Force levels. He is the co-editor of Drones and Global Order: Implications of Remote Warfare for International Society (2022), which studies the implications of drone warfare on global politics. With colleague Shyam Raman he has also co-authored Legitimacy of Drone Warfare: Evaluating Public Perceptions (Routledge in 2024), which explores public’s perceptions of legitimate drone strikes.

Dr Jerilyn Packer is an award-winning educator, specialising in the US military school system. Twelve years ago she transitioned into educational leadership, which enables her to engage in reflective practices and collaborative coaching with district and school leaders in the Department of Defense Education Activity. Skilled in strategic planning, professional learning, and data analysis, she partners with senior leaders to identify educational gaps and craft targeted solutions to improve achievement. Dr. Packer is currently running a research project which uses interviews and focus groups among senior officers to determine what shapes their trust in AI-enabled military technologies. Going forward, she hopes to employ this research in an upcoming role within the Senior Executive Service, so her findings will have broad policy impact.

Paul and Jerilyn help us grapple with recent technological developments in warfare which have huge implications for how governments, militaries and the public visualise conflict – and indeed peacekeeping – now and in the future. Indeed, as Paul’s 2022 edited volume underlines, drone warfare and AI require us to rethink the structural and normative pillars of global order. Between them, they discuss recent developments in drones and AI technologies; their increasing incorporation into military arsenals, strategy and practice; barriers to their use such as concerns around ethics, governance and trust; and the ways in which they are changing our habits of visualising war itself.

Among other topics, we touch on the dehumanising, racist and colonial dimensions of drone warfare; the moral questions posed by asymmetric/'riskless'/'post-heroic' conflict; and connections between Greek myths, dystopian science fiction and the new war-storytelling patterns that are increasingly inspired by AI. This episode offers important reflections, based on both Paul and Jerilyn's research, into the challenges and concerns of professionals who find themselves in an often 'uneasy partnership' with emerging military technologies, and poses critical questions about wider public understandings and perceptions.

We hope you find the discussion interesting. Paul dives deeper into these important topics in recent articles 'Trust but Verify' and 'AI and the future of warfare'.  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 Dr Joseph Scales, a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of Religion, Philosophy and History at the University of Agder in Norway. This podcast is the second part of a pair looking at the history and representation of conflict in ancient Judea. 

In part 1, Conflict and Identity in Ancient Judaism, Joe gave us a whirlwind tour of a whole series of conflicts that shaped Jewish history from around 175 BCE through to the early second century CE – looking particularly at their impact on Jewish nationhood and identity formation. That conversation provides really useful context for this epsiode, which dives deep into some of the textual sources for Jewish conflict history in antiquity. Joe draws particularly on his current research project, called Fighting Talk: Motivating Violence in Ancient Judaism, which examines the nature of pre-battle speeches in ancient Jewish texts and their relationship to established forms of pre-battle exhortation in Greek and Roman sources. 

As Joe has written: ‘People resort to violence for all kinds of reasons. In the interests of peace, it is essential to understand how people may be incited toward organised violence. …In warfare, combatants are often incited towards their actions by others, and in the ancient world, such incitement frequently took the form of a pre-battle speech: Greek, Roman and Jewish literature contains many examples.’ In unpicking a wide range of ancient pre-battle speeches, and exploring recurring components (such as the othering of enemies, claims about the just or necessary nature of upcoming violence, a commander’s handling of his soldiers’ fears, and visualisations of success), Joe’s research contributes not only to a deeper understanding of how warfare was conceptualised and driven in antiquity but also to wider reflections on how organised violence can be conceptualised, justified and incited today.

We hope you find the discussion interesting. 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 Dr Joseph Scales, a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of Religion, Philosophy and History at the University of Agder in Norway. Joe’s doctoral research analysed spaces of Jewish identity in ancient Galilee, looking particularly at the impact of material culture on personal, communal and regional identity formation during the Hasmonean dynasty, from 100 BCE onwards. His book Galiliean Spaces of Identity will be published in 2024.    

Joe’s work on Jewish and Hellenistic identities, and their cross-cultural interactions, has led to further research on ancient Jewish texts written in Greek, which enable us to understand aspects of the shared culture of the ancient Mediterranean world; and he has become very interested in women’s practices and rituals in Judaism. Both of these research interests feed into his current project, called Fighting Talk: Motivating Violence in Ancient Judaism, which examines the nature of pre-battle speeches in ancient Jewish texts and their relationship to established forms of pre-battle exhortation in Greek and Roman sources.

Because the politics of the region in this period are so complex, we have recorded a Part 1 and a Part 2 for this podcast. In this episode, Part 1, Joe  talks us through Jewish interactions with other groups and political powers in the region from around 175BCE to the early 2nd century CE – to help us understand the history of Judea and Jerusalem, and the ways in which ongoing conflict (near and far) shaped Jewish practice and identity, not just at the time but for many centuries afterwards. In Part 2 (which we hope you will also listen to, because it’s super interesting!), Joe  dives deep into some of the textual sources from the period, looking particularly at the ways in which they visualised battle itself and justified war.

We hope you find the discussion interesting. 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, Visualising Peace student Madighan Ryan interviews Dr. Mark Wong, a Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Research Methods, and the Deputy Head of Urban Studies, at the University of Glasgow. Dr. Wong has extensive expertise in the fields of responsible AI and the Just Transition, and has been an advisor in this capacity to the Scottish Government and Public Health Scotland, amongst other institutions. He is also the principal investigator of the interdisciplinary Innovator’s Assemble Project at the University of Glasgow, which produced the subject of this podcast: SEvEN: Seven voices, One Future, a videogame aimed at building an environmentally sustainable future for Scotland by highlighting Minoritized Ethnic people’s voices and the importance of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. SEvEN was recently nominated in the Spirit of Scotland Category for the Scottish Games Awards.

This episode draws on Madighan Ryan's research into the synergies between environmental sustainability and peace. She is looking at everything from the importance of inner peace in remaining resilient as a member of the climate movement, to the necessity of a healthy environment in lowering risk of scarcity and geopolitical conflict. Her aim is to emphasize that peacebuilding and environmental action are not  two separate entities but intimately connected. Madighan is particularly keen to draw on conversations with the wider Visualising Peace team about the importance of involving traditionally marginalised groups and minoritised voices in conversations that connect climate and peacebuilding, and it was for this reason that she invited Dr Wong to share his innovate gaming project with listeners.

In the first part of the podcast, Dr. Wong establishes the inseparability of peace and sustainability. Not only is mitigating and adapting to climate change necessary for a peaceful future, Dr. Wong emphasises that a peaceful future will only be possible if the voices of minoritised ethnic peoples are centred in conversations surrounding a just transition towards an environmentally and socially sustainable future. The rest of the podcast is a deep dive into the details of SEvEN. Dr. Wong speaks on everything from design choices, to the real-life impact of SEvEN, to the effectiveness of video games as a tool to visualise peace.

As Dr. Wong paints a picture of SEvEN, it becomes evident that this video game is a means of visualising peace in two different and interconnected capacities. First, the game helps players visualise peace and sustainability as a process that should centre minoritised ethnic peoples’ voices and traditional knowledge. Players learn the importance of listening and of supporting this type of knowledge. Second, the process itself of co-designing the video game with different industry partners in a collaborative manner does so much to teach the designers and to bolster community involvement. The way in which SEvEN was produced is itself an example of peacebuilding.

Please enjoy this episode as we immerse ourselves into the sustainable world of SEvEN and explore gaming as a means of visualising peace! 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 Peace website. 

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Albert Surinach I Campos

In this episode, Alice interviews Anne Lene Stein, a PhD Student in the Department of Political Science at Lund University, in Sweden. With a background in both social anthropology and peace-and-conflict studies, Anne’s research over the past ten years has focused on peace activism in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon (among other places). She is particularly interested in protest and resistance in asymmetrical conflict settings, and has conducted several rounds of fieldwork in the region to understand better how different peace movements have been operating and evolving.

Her most recent visits to Israel and Palestine were in summer 2023, before the latest tragic escalation in the conflict. While there, she talked with both Palestinian and Israeli peace campaigners and anti-occupation activists, and observed joint Israeli-Palestinian protests and commemoration events. In the wake of Hamas’ brutal attacks on Israeli civilians on October 7th, and Israel’s sustained bombing of Gaza over the following weeks, peace in the region looks further away than ever – but work towards peace is all the more urgent.

In the podcast, Anne outlines a brief history of peace activism in both Israel and Palestine, discussing the impact which different events in the long-running conflict have had. She reflects on increasing hostility towards peace activists, particularly in Israel; on creative approaches to peacebuilding on both sides, including the Palestinian concept of Sumud ('steadfastness') as a form of non-violent resistance; on the opportunities and challenges of bi-national peace campaigning; and shifts in language and focus from peace-building to anti-occupation activism. She also discusses the theory of 'agonistic' peacebuilding, which asks us to distinguish between enemy and adversary, antagonism and agonism, and which aims to make space for ongoing contestation and multiple truths in peacebuilding processes.

As Anne explains, the word 'peace' has itself become a contested concept over time in Israel and Palestine, with different communities visualising it in very different ways. As a result, while many are still working and hoping for peace, the word is used less and less often. Given the world-building nature of language and narratives, we discuss what the implications are for the future if people no longer feel able to articulate their aspirations as peace-work. Despite all the obstacles, and the devastating impact of recent events, Anne cites activists on both sides who insist that accepting the ongoing violence is not an option. In their words, 'if we keep meeting, partnering, taking action - we will break the cycle'.

We hope you find the discussion interesting. 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, Visualising Peace student Albert Surinach I Campos interviews Prof. Giuseppe Pezzini, Associate Professor of Latin Language and Literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. While Prof. Pezzini's main area of research is in Classics, his interests extend beyond the ancient world, focussing particularly on Tolkien life and literary corpus. He is set to publish a monograph soon on Tolkien’s theory of imagination, stemming from his work as Tolkien Editor for the Journal of Inklings Studies and a collaboration with the ITIA Institute at the University of St Andrews, where he previously taught. 

Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and his other works have had a profound impact in the 20th and 21st century. While film versions of his books have particularly influenced habits of visualising war, Tolkien's views on peace have lots of relevance in the modern world. In this episode we discuss how peace and peacebuilding get represented in Tolkien’s corpus, the author’s personal experiences of war, and his attitude to pacifism. The conversation falls into four parts, exploring ideas of peace via Tolkien's representation of the four main races of Middle-Earth: elves, orcs, dwarves and men. 

One feature of Tolkien’s works is his nostalgic view of a world in steady decline. After a glorious golden age, the successive eras of mortals are increasingly damaged by constant wars and injustices. Here, we see a very clear parallel with the Golden Age of antiquity, as well as with other mythologies throughout the world. No race embodies this diminishing 'golden age' as much as the elves, and discussion of them gets us thinking about Tolkien's nuanced perspectives on peace. To what extent is peace modelled as an escape (available only to some), as an ideal rather than a feasible, sustainable reality? And what can other characters - like the Ents - contribute to our understanding of why people go to war and what peacebuilding might involve? 

Sauron and Orcs come particularly to mind when we visualise war in The Lord of the Rings. As Prof. Pezzini explains, the mythology behind orcs is murky, with their origins purposefully hidden, and they act much of the time as a stand-in for 'the other', a faceless, evil enemy that is easily demonised. In recent times, they have made their way into popular culture; for instance, some Ukrainians have referred to Russian soldiers as 'orcs'. However, Prof Pezzini reminds us that Tolkien's representation of orcs (outlined in a letter to his son) included some empathy and pity, not just dehumanisation.  Similarly, his representation of dwarves and men encompasses both belligerence and more positive qualities, and this enables Tolkien to explore aspects of both war and peace with greater nuance. While reflecting on the more militarising nature of film versions of Tolkien's books, Prof. Pezzini helps us to unpick different ways of visualising war and peace across his literary corpus, in relation to his own wartime experiences, offering lots of food for thought in relation to contemporary conflict.  

We hope you enjoy this episode, as we travel to the fascinating world of Middle-Earth while trying to make sense of our own understanding of peace-building in the real world. 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 Albert Surinach I Campos

In this episode, Visualising Peace student Robert Rayner interviews Debby Flack. Debby served as an Ecumenical Accompanier (EA) with EAPPI in Palestine and Israel. EAPPI is a World Council of Churches programme which sends human rights monitors to Palestine and Israel for three months at a time. The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel was formed in response to a 2002 call from the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem to create an international peacekeeping presence in Palestine. EAs form multinational teams which provide an impartial, nonviolent 24/7 protective presence across the West Bank. While the World Council of Churches and many organisations which send EAs are Christian organisations, the programme sends those of all faiths and none. The programme has evacuated EAs during the most recent escalation of the conflict.

Debby is a Quaker from Godalming in Surrey, who was trained and served in the South Hebron Hills earlier this year (2023). Robert discusses with her what an ‘average’ day as an EA looked like, what accompaniment actually is, and why ‘principled impartiality’ is so important. Debby explains how her experience has shaped her life back home, how it has led to her current advocacy and activism and the importance of local engagement for peace. During the podcast, she discusses both the pragmatic and more abstract aspects of the work, from spiritual practices for peacekeepers to how to see and understand both sides of a deep-rooted conflict. She describes the importance of EAs’ protective presence, especially against the backdrop of the current violent flareup of the conflict, in the wake of Hamas' attacks on October 7th and Israel's military response.

This episode reflects Robert's wider research interests in the role of religion in peacebuilding, and what the advantages and disadvantages of neutrality are for NGOs working in conflict-affected areas.

We hope you find the conversation interesting. For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, including some of Robert’s museum entries on Neutrality, Impartiality and EAPPI, please visit the University of St Andrews' Visualising Peace website.

In this episode, Alice interviews Dr Jaremey McMullin, a Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. Jaremey’s research spans a wide range of topics, from ex-combatant disarmament and veteran reintegration to youth peacebuilding and political participation in post-conflict contexts.

His 2013 monograph Ex-Combatants and the Post-Conflict State: Challenges of Reintegration examines disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration policies and experiences via four case studies, in Namibia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Liberia. He is particularly interested in the impacts of reintegration and veterans’ assistance programmes on people’s post-conflict identities, and also in the consequences of incomplete reintegration for ongoing conflict transformation. As well as working in Africa, he has examined veterans’ assistance programmes in the US, producing (among other outputs) a short documentary called Silkies (2020) on the prevention of veteran suicide. He has written several reports for the Disarmament, Demoblisation and Reintegration section at the United Nations Department of Peace Operations, and he serves on the Research Working Group of the Integrated DDR Training Group.

In the podcast, Jaremey helps us to visualise the war-to-peace transitions experienced by ex-combatants and veterans as life-long journeys, which can be injurious for many. He exposes the myth of 'return' (as if people can simply pick up the threads of their pre-war lives); discusses differences in perceptions and framings of ex-combatants and veterans; and reflects on the limitations of many DDR programmes.

This leads to broader discussion of the hard work of peacebuilding. Among other work, Jaremey has produced a documentary film series on the everyday work of peacebuilding called Liberia: Legacies of Peace. As Jaremey  explains, the five films ‘profile people at every level of Liberian society engaged in the hard work of war-to-peace transition.’ He has developed a particular interest in youth peacebuilding processes and identities, and his current project, Motorcycling as Peacebuilding in Liberia, examines the experiences of groups of ex-combatant and conflict-affected youth in Liberia who have become motorcycle taxi drivers – overcoming insecurity and marginalisation, and emerging as active peacebuilders themselves.

In exploring Jaremey's work in this space, we discuss the ethics and dynamics of Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Jaremey's efforts to involve young peacebuilders as knowledge-producers and research designers, rather than as objects of study. He sets out his approach in Hustling, Cycling, Peacebuilding and What is the benefit of this project?, among other publications.

We hope you find the discussion interesting. 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