Memory, Trauma and Reconciliation in Post-War Bosnia & Herzegovina
Tuesday 23rd March 2010
6pm – Welcome & Drinks
6.30 pm – Forum Starts
Room G08, Melbourne Law School, 185 Pelham Street, Parkville
- Ron Adams, ethno-historian at La Trobe University
- Maria Tumarkin, Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Research, Swinburne University
- Hariz Halilovich, Research Fellow at the Department of General Practice, University of Melbourne.
This forum will explore the impact that memories of war and its associated trauma have on Bosnians.
It will highlight the importance of reconciliation initiatives for the first post-war generations, who did not experience the conflict first-hand, but who live with its ongoing effects nonetheless.
The forum will also consider the global resonance of the Bosnian conflict, in particular the way in which social and historical memory of the war impacts on the Bosnian diaspora.
A forum presented in support of Most Mira (Peace Bridge) Youth Festival, a UK-based charity aiding reconciliation in Northern Bosnia through work with young people
Ron Adams is an ethno-historian at La Trobe University who works closely with the Bosnian community in Melbourne. As well as his involvement in community activities, he works with students researching the Bosnian genocide and its aftermath and has conducted study tours to Bosnia for university students. With Hariz Halilovich he maintains a close association with returnees to the ‘ethnically cleansed’ village of Klotjevac in eastern Bosnia.
Maria Tumarkin is a writer and an academic. She is the author of Traumascapes, Courage and Otherland (April2010). Maria is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Research at Swinburne University, where she is working on an international collaborative project ‘Social Memory and Historical Justice’. Bosnia has been one of the most important influences in her thinking and writing about trauma, memory and justice.
Hariz Halilovich is a social anthropologist and an award-winning Bosnian writer and commentator, currently working as a Research Fellow at the Department of General Practice at University of Melbourne. He recently completed his PhD thesis titled ‘Displacement, popular memory and trans-local identities in Bosnian war-torn communities’. Hariz’s home and many family members and friends perished in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.
About Most Mira (Peace Bridge) Youth Festival
Most Mira is a week-long youth festival in Prijedor, Northern Bosnia. This region is one of the most severely effected parts of Bosnia, and remains an economically deprived and traumatised community. The Festival provides a space for reconciliation through meaningful interaction between young Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats, who have lived in segregated communities since the end of the war in 1995.
The first Festival was organised in May 2009, with the second Festival to follow in April 2010. Almost 400 children took part last year, supported by 68 volunteers from 15 countries.
Workshops in art, dance, circus skills, photography, journalism and puppetry were delivered by skilled international volunteers and enabled creative collaboration between all children. Most Mira aims to provide the new generation with an opportunity to redefine their identities away from nationalism, thus contributing to a more stable future for the region.
Most Mira has no paid staff and relies solely on the goodwill of charitable trusts and individuals around the world to deliver the Festival. For more information about the Festival and to make a donation, please go to:
mostmiraproject.org
Contact: s.zivak@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au