Photo credit: Laura-Muñoz Encinar

September 26-28, 2023
Santiago de Compostela, Spain

a TRACTS multimodal training school

What?

This international training school aims to analyse the material traces of conflict and their impact in the present through the conceptual lens of different disciplines: Archaeology, Forensic Sciences, Social Anthropology and Memory Studies.

By focusing on the three main themes of Materiality, Memory, and Technology the training school explores the traces of contemporary European conflicts. It will bring together scholars from the social sciences, humanities and forensic sciences with memorialization and advanced technology experts to examine the remnants of 20th century conflicts and develop inclusive strategies for historical knowledge dissemination.

The summer school will be developed for three days at the Institute of Heritage Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council (INCIPIT CSIC) in Santiago de Compostela (Spain), and is open, among others, to MA students, PhD candidates, early career researchers, technicians, memorial experts, and activists.

Combining theoretical and practical contents, participants will explore archaeological, forensic, and ethnographic materials to learn about innovative methodological approaches based on three axes:

-Forensic Archaeology Laboratory: Training in theoretical and practical methodologies of fieldwork and laboratory techniques for the analysis of the material culture and human remains found in contemporary conflict-affected sites.

-Experimental Ethnography Laboratory: Training in methodological, theoretical, and practical contents for ethnographic fieldwork.

-Re-presentation Strategies in a Digital Age:  Training in the use of non and minimally invasive archaeological methods, 3D scanned landscapes and artefacts. We will also examine and use digital tools and discuss their potential to provide local, national, and global audiences with access to conflict-related heritage.

Workshop Leaders

This TRACTS workshop and training school will be facilitated by researchers, image and sound makers, and writers who are actively engaged in multimodal forms of knowledge production in relation to mass violence sites, including from archaeological, anthropological, and historical perspectives.

Laura Muñoz-Encinar INCIPIT CSIC

César Parcero Oubiña INCIPIT CSIC

Iñigo Sánchez Fuarros INCIPIT CSIC

Zahira Aragüete-Toribio University of Neuchâtel

Available Fellowships

TRACTS is offering several fellowships for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers based in Europe. Through a reimbursement scheme, these fellowships will cover travel and accommodation expenses. Students based locally will be eligible for local travel reimbursements. The workshop itself is free of charge.

Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers outside of Europe can also participate, but their travel and accommodation will not be reimbursed.

Applications/Pitches

Interested participants should send a short version of their CV (2 pages maximum), a brief motivation statement about why you would like to take part in the training school, and a biography (100 words maximum) by 11pm (GMT) on Monday, June 26th.

Submission Details

Application documents should be submitted in one PDF file.

All dossiers must be submitted by email tracts@st-andrews.ac.uk by 11pm (GMT) on Monday, June 26th with the following subject heading: UNEARTHING - First Name Last Name - Institution.

We will announce the participants by the beginning of July 2023.

Host Institution

This Training School is organized by TRACTS (CA20134), supported by European Cooperation in Science and Technology. COST is a funding agency for research and innovation network.

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne

June 1-2, 2023 Climate Change Working Group

[Image: Le rebrousse-poll, nº 6-7, 1978. Archive Contestataires]

Archives are spaces of conflict where history and memory are constantly disputed. They tend to reproduce the political and cultural power of modernity. Yet, since the 1970s they have been largely challenged by post-structuralist critics, feminism, queer theory and decolonial discourses, among others, which have detected the exclusions, authoritarianism and epistemological roughness that traditionally operate in archival practice. At the same time, from these nodes of knowledge, various ways of subverting archives have been suggested, with proposals for counter-archives and anarchives. In the current context of ecological and energy crisis, it becomes urgent to include the ecosocial approach in the equation of critical analysis of the archive and its technologies. This workshop aims to question where, with which intensities, and how the traces of the ecological movement are studied and disseminated at the international level.

This two-day meeting intends to open a space to approach the traces of environmentalism without temporal or geographical restriction by three different, though complementary, ways.

1. Drawing attention to the usual lack of ecological specificity of archives. Although there are repositories created and managed by environmental groups, it is common to find the documents and graphic and audiovisual materials produced by the movement, or of importance for reconstructing its history, in other kinds of archives, like the one belonging to trade unions, foundations or governmental entities. Locating the spaces where the traces of ecologism lie is part of our interests.
2. Studying the structure and metabolism of archives. In the archival collections dwell the bases of the mindsets that allow us to think and understand the past of environmentalism, which are in permanent connection with the values, interests and needs of the present. These mental frameworks define cataloguing processes, heritage policies between the preservation and dissemination of archival documents. All this affects the current role of the memory of environmentalism. Rethinking how to access archives or to develop cultural policies beyond the logics of mere material accumulation, how to address the energy costs required to guarantee the material conditions (temperature, humidity or digitization processes) for document preservation, or how to experiment with ways of disseminating materials and forms of historical production are also central to us.
3. Providing examples of work with environmental archives from a multidisciplinary perspective. Be it through the activity of activist collectives or archivists concerned with environmental memory; from different academic branches, such as the history of toxics or visual culture; or through the practice of artists and curators committed to developing ways of recovering and making known the materials of environmental memory. The aim of this event is to share ways of working with and from the archive and to think collectively how to make visible the traces of ecological activism in its multiple historical, social, economic and environmental entanglements throughout history.

Funding: The organization can provide funding for a limited group of proposals. More information will be offered after the selection process.