May be of some interest for members on this list.

 

 

Dear Colleagues

Please refer to details below regarding an evening lecture given by Jovan Byford and David Kaposi, CCIG Psychosocial Research Programme on Monday 16 May in Region 1, Camden, if you would like to attend, please register via CCIG website, given below and look forward to hearing from you.

Researching sensitive topics: Talking to Holocaust survivors and examining representations of Israel/Palestine

Event Researching sensitive topics: Talking to Holocaust survivors and examining representations of Israel/Palestine has been updated.

 

Monday, 16 May 2016, 18:00 - 20:00

The Open University in London (Region 1), 1-11 Hawley Crescent, Camden Town, London, NW1 8NP

What does it mean to be sensitive in research?

In this double lecture social psychologists Jovan Byford and David Kaposi draw on their research on Holocaust survivor testimony and representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to discuss the challenges involved in researching sensitive topics.  Using examples from the two very different contexts, Byford and Kaposi consider how the experience of violence and its destructive impact on human bonds can be analysed in a way that attends to the concerns of those affected, while at the same time questioning established assumptions about the world and the ways of understanding it.

Jovan Byford focuses on the tension apparent in the discourses surrounding Holocaust survivor testimony, between the emphasis on accuracy and authenticity conveyed in and through testimony. Byford argues that rather than being seen as intrinsic, and competing, qualities of survivors’ memories, accuracy and authenticity should be approached as closely intertwined, socially and culturally mediated concerns that survivors, interviewers and audiences attend to, and manage, as they engage in the institutionally embedded practice of bearing witness.

David Kaposi analyses the representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the British Press and seeks to demonstrate  the fragility of the act of understanding violence. He argues that dominant representations reproduce the structure of the violent event itself. Thus, instead of a relational understanding of political-moral responsibility, “Gaza” becomes a mythical scene for the battle between Good and Evil. Instead of facilitating thinking about it, representations reproduce the very structure of violence itself.

Chair: Stephanie Taylor, The Open University, Psychology Department

 

To Register:

 

http://www.open.ac.uk/ccig/events/researching-sensitive-topics-talking-to-holocaust-survivors-and-examining-representations-of

Register

 

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