Trauma

This inter-, trans- and multi-disciplinary project seeks to examine and explore issues surrounding individual and collective trauma, both in terms of practice, theory and lived reality. Trauma studies have emerged from its foundation in psychoanalysis to be a dominant methodology for understanding contemporary events and our reactions to them. Critics have argued that we live in a “culture of trauma”. Repeated images of suffering and death form our collective and/or cultural unconscious. This project seeks in particular to explore the relation between trauma, memory and identity, both national and collective.

The project will explore and assess a number of core themes.

Public and political trauma
Personal and individual trauma
Diagnosing and treating trauma
Theorising trauma
Representing trauma

Related themes will also be identified for development and exploration. Out of our deliberations it is anticipated that a series of related cross context research projects will develop.