LERRN-RRN Webinar | Haunted by Violence
Please note: this webinar was held as a meeting; no video recording will be made available.
On March 11, the Local Engagement Refugee Research Network (LERRN) and the Refugee Research Network (RRN) hosted their second webinar of the year, featuring three anthropologists who reflected on their unique personal experiences as international students from post-war Bosnia to the United States. The webinar, titled “Haunted by Violence”, featured Saida Hodžić (Associate Professor of Anthropology and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Cornell University), Azra Hromadžić (Associate Professor at The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University) and Larisa Kurtović (Associate Professor at the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies, University of Ottawa). All three are anthropologists who left Bosnia in the 1990s to pursue their studies overseas and ultimately pursued academic careers in the US and Canada.
The webinar was moderated by Jennifer Hyndman, Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change and Associate Vice-President Research at York University. 116 participants were registered for this live-only event. The three presenters read excerpts from their work and presented personal reflections about the liberal violence of caring for refugees and how the label “refugee” positions, even displaces, one in a new country like the United States. This personal and intimate discussion was very timely given current developments in Ukraine, and the lives of displaced persons worldwide.
For those interested in further readings related to the webinar, we have compiled a list of resources:
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Saida Hodžić, Azra Hromadžić and Larisa Kurtović – three chapters from “Refugees Write Back” – Maintaining Refuge: Anthropological Reflections in Uncertain Times, p. 157-181.
Saida Hodžić, Azra Hromadžić and Larisa Kurtović all participated in this series called “Yugosplaining the world” which features different types of autoethnographic and commentary.
Hodžić, S. 2016. The Twilight of Cutting. African Activism and Life after NGOs. University of California Press.
Kurtović, L. 2021. “When the ‘people’ leave: Emptiness, labor migration and the limits of nationalist (bio)politics in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Nationalities Papers, 49(5), 873-892.
Kurtović, L. 2018. “Between expert and witness: insider anthropology and public engagement,” Anthrodendum (Formerly known as Savage Minds) February 5.
Hromadžić, A. 2022. “Life in an Age of Death: War and the River in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” American Anthropologist.
Korac, Maja. 1993. “Serbian Nationalism: Nationalism of My Own People,” Feminist Review, 45(1):108-112.
Musila, Grace A. 2019. “Against collaboration – or the native who wanders off,” Journal of African Cultural Studies, 31:3, 286-293.
Mark Okello Oyat’s Building Research Relationships and Setting the Agenda, previous LERRN webinar.
This report was prepared by: Hayley Britton, LERRN Communications/Knowledge Mobilization Officer.
The final webinar in the series, Changing the Structures of Forced Migration Research, will take place on 31 March, 2022
The LERRN-RRN Webinar Series on Ethics in Forced Migration Research is coordinated by Rachel McNally, LERRN Knowledge Mobilization and Translation Officer. For further information or ideas please contact us here.