Research Astrid Jamar

Abstract

Researching pluriversal visions of peace across the Burundian-Congolese fluid borders, this project is dedicated to documenting plural ways of 'understanding the world' in conflict-affected settings. The project will bring together communities affected by severe flooding, feminist activists, artists and researchers across Bujumbura and Uvira, two border towns on the Northern coast of the Tanganyika Lake across Burundi and Congo (DRC). Building on decolonial feminist and arts-based methodologies (e.g. Wang 1999, Theron 2008, Smith 2013), we produce collaboratively photographs, drawings, images and texts that capture various meanings granted to entanglements of bodies, nature, conflicts and peace. Our team seek to collaboratively enhance decolonial approaches to peace education in Burundi, South Kivu/DRC, and Belgium. Specifically, we co-create artistic material, organize pilot activities and produce a pedagogic portfolio in French, English, Kirundi, and Swahili. In doing so, we are seeking to tackle upfront usual power asymmetries sustained within peacebuilding and peace education activities. Rather than hiring foreign experts to produce pedagogic contents disseminated to conflict-affected communities, the project provides means and spaces for people affected by violence in South Kivu and Burundi to document their own visions of what peace means to themselves, as well as reflect upon methodological and decolonial feminist insights from the collaboration. Overall, the project's main objective is to develop and reflect upon innovative contributions to re-imagining how peacebuilding education can be delivered.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Jamar Astrid

Research team(s)

• Development processes, actors and policies

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Taking dreams seriously, this project aims to articulate alternative ways of 'understanding the world' in conflict-affected environments. Knowledges produced about peace interventions have long been articulated around responses to root causes and symptoms of violence. Increasingly conflict studies acknowledge limitations of peace interventions due to their western-centric logics. Conflict-ridden South Kivu is an emblematic example in which extensive peace interventions had limited success in sustaining peace. Interrogating and nuancing Western articulations, the project will document different ways of experiencing violence and understanding the cosmos (the world). Re-assessing the dreamlife responds to the urgent need to appreciate alternative ways of knowing violence and managing peacebuilding that do not align with dominant peacebuilding approaches. Across time and regions, dreams have been associated with activities such as journeys the mind takes out of the body, communications with the dead, malign desires from a third party, dialogues with the subconscious, and neurological phenomena. The well-known but often neglected fluid, sensorial, bodily, spiritual dimensions of dreams will be mobilized to discuss underlying pluriversalism. Building on feminist and decolonial scholarship, the project is motivated by decolonial aspirations, and is dedicated to theoretical and empirical examinations of pluriversal - rather than universal – cosmovisions of dreams and violence.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Groof Matthias
• Promoter: Titeca Kristof
• Co-promoter: Van Hecken Gert
• Fellow: Jamar Astrid

Research team(s)

• Visual and Digital Cultures Research Center (ViDi)
• Development processes, actors and policies

Project type(s)

• Research Project