Over the course of our project, we have benefited from the generosity of a host of guest lecturers – including feminist scholar, peacebuilding practitioner and storyteller Dr Roxani Krystalli. Together with her colleague Philipp Schultz, Krystalli is leading a research project called ‘A different kind of war story: centering love and care in peace and conflict studies’. As they put it:
‘In the midst and wake of armed conflict, people continue to forge intimate relationships, fall in love, and extend different forms of care to one another. Yet, narratives about armed conflict predominantly focus on harms and suffering. This project asks: How can centering love and care change scholarly and policy understandings of conflict and peace?… [it] responds to emerging calls for scholars of violence to move beyond damage-centered research in favor of also meaningfully engaging with the forces and relations that sustain life.’
‘A different kind of war story: centering love and care in peace and conflict studies’
Their work has inspired us to do some research of our own on the role of love and care in people’s visualisations of peace and in approaches to peacebuilding. We saw expressions of love and care, for example, in some of the entries submitted to our Visualising Peace photography competition and our Everyday Peace photo collage. Students experimenting with Peace Tales, Scripting Peace and Useful Fiction have also included love and care in some of their work; and of course it has come into research on inner peace. Our team also requested that elements of love and care should be incorporated into the ‘peace game‘ which we co-designed with colleagues at Abertay University.
In response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, student Grace Bitner developed a series of museum entries reflecting on instances of love and care amid conflict which were shared on social media:
- https://peacemuseum.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2022/05/14/pockets-of-peace-in-ukraine-spring-2022-a-reflection/
- https://peacemuseum.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2022/05/11/pockets-of-peace-in-ukraine-spring-2022-care-for-nature/
- https://peacemuseum.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2022/05/13/pockets-of-peace-in-ukraine-spring-2022-care-for-animals/
- https://peacemuseum.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2022/05/11/pockets-of-peace-in-ukraine-spring-2022-care-through-music/
Student Otilia Meden has also dived deep into love and care through podcasts, peace education research and museum entries:
- https://peacemuseum.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2023/02/20/taking-love-and-care-seriously-in-classrooms/
- Taking Love and Care Seriously in Peace and Conflict Studies
- Peace and Post-Trauma Recovery in Northern Ireland
