This roundtable brings together scholars from across the University with an interest in the Arts and Peacebuilding. It aims to generate debate and create new interdisciplinary networks by critically analysing the intersections between protest, empowerment and healing.

We invite all participants to consider the following issues for discussion at this roundtable:

How effective are music, language and the arts in contributing to protest, empowerment and healing? How are these forms of engagement with peacebuilding understood across different media? For example, to what extent does empowerment lead to healing and why? How can protest be a form of negotiation and in what ways can it usefully contribute towards healing? What kinds of differences might be taken into account in the mediating forces of visual and sonic arts and the  emotional dynamics of peacebuilding? What kinds of responsibility and expectations does the use of the arts in public organisations create? What are the boundaries or limitations of their usage?

Chairs and Discussants

• Dr. Olivier Urbain, Leverhulme Visiting Research Professor, Mitchell lnstitute; Min-On Music Research Institute (MOMRI) Senior Research Fellow; Director, Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research
• Prof. Fiona Magowan GRI Fellow, Mitchell Institute; History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics
• Dr. Maruška Svašek, GRI Fellow, Mitchell Institute; History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics
• Dr. Mark Phelan (Drama) School of Arts, English and Languages

Click the link for more information on the event - Mitchell Institute Roundtable leaflet.