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Dear Critters,

Please see the CfP below which may be of interest to some of you.

Best wishes,
Una

CFP: Shattered Lives, Shattered Worlds, Shattered Space? Questions of trauma, wellbeing and emotions in the Middle East.

As part of the BRISMES Critical Middle East Section, we are hereby calling for the submission of abstracts for interdisciplinary panels on the themes of trauma, wellbeing, emotions and space in the MENA region, to be held at the Annual BRISMES conference at Kings College London from 25-28 June, 2018.  We particularly welcome abstracts by academics and practitioners alike.

People, groups, societies within the Middle East have suffered from systematic violence and conflict, including severe authoritarian repression, social discord and alienation, colonization, civil wars, displacement and violent imperialist interventions. In this panel we are interested in addressing the psychological, societal, cultural, religious and political impacts of - and modes of resilience to – such violence. While intersections between violence, space and collective action have proven popular within political science in recent years, little attention has been paid to the relation between space, violence and (threats to) emotional and physical wellbeing. We are thus seeking to bring together scholars from a range of different disciplines – including anthropology, literary studies, political science, sociology, and psychology – to shed light on the (re)configurations of space and its intersection with trauma, violence, emotions and wellbeing.

We are hence calling for papers that specifically address these topics either theoretically or through a range of specific case studies. Questions we are interested in include (but are not limited to):

·    How should we understand the role and importance of social, political, religious and cultural space(s) within traumatic experiences? How do they impact traumatic expressions and our conceptual understanding?
·    What are the existential impacts of social and political violence? How are these expressed within specific spaces or locations? And what are the individual, social and political consequences of these expressions?
·    Does trauma alter the meaning and experiences of time and belonging within the MENA region?  And how do intergenerational, social and cultural traumatic configurations affect the present existential, social and political reality?
·    How are social, political and personal spaces adapted and altered within modes of emotional and traumatic resilience and collective action? And how does (individual, social and political) space feature in traumatic memories?
·    What are the individual, intergenerational, social and political effects of displacement and colonization? How do they relate to emotional wellbeing and traumatic recovery? What are the impacts of displacement and mobility on (mental) health provisions?
·    How are traumatic spaces embodied within social and political contexts, as well as (academic or literary) writings?

We hence welcome the submission of abstracts around these topics. Abstracts with your name and your institutional affiliation (if any) should be sent to: Dr Vivienne Matthies-Boon ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>) and Dr Una McGahern ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>) by 12:00noon (CEST timezone) Wednesday 29 November 2017.  Please note that we will not be able to provide travel grants, subsistence or conference fee reduction.



Dr. Una McGahern

Lecturer in Politics
Associate Editor: Politics<https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/politics/journal202481>

Newcastle University
40-42 Great North Road, Newcastle NE1 7RU
Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/staff/profile/una.mcgahern<http://www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/staff/profile/una.mcgahern>
Twitter: @unamcgahern<https://twitter.com/unamcgahern>

Recently published:
'Protesting at the crossroads: Framing "in-between places" in spatial analyses of contention', Political Geography<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629817301208>.
'"They go to get a gun": Hidden histories of violence and the politics of rumour in Israel', Security Dialogue<http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0967010616668066>.
'Spatial Regimes of Power: Combined Municipal Policing in the Arab City of Nazareth', International Political Sociology<https://academic.oup.com/ips/article/10/3/206/1750347/Spatial-Regimes-of-Power-Combined-Municipal>.
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