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War has been a central feature of the human experience. It requires study from many different vantage points, from military, intellectual, and diplomatic history to histories of science and technology.
The “lessons of history” are a much-discussed feature of this. Meanwhile, the challenges associated with documenting war – of identifying, accessing, collecting, preserving, and making use of war records – have often been taken for granted. The contemporary policy relevance of primary sources – and of the historical methods and expertise needed to make sense of them – is increasingly reflected across the social sciences, in law and in other disciplines. Similarly, there is a broader interest in “battlefield evidence”, “battlefield information”, and “conflict archives” that currently animates policymakers, political scientists, civil society actors, and international institutions.
The Documenting War Conference organised by the Conflict Records Unit of the Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War will explore these issues through series of case studies and panel discussions.
Conference Programme
9:00 - 9:15 - Log in
9:15-9:30 – Introduction & Opening Comments
Professor Joe Maiolo and Dr Michael Innes
9:30-10:45 - Panel 1: The Anglo-American Experience – Past, Present, Future?
Discussant: Dr Michael Innes, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Dept of War Studies, KCL
Panellists: Dr Jeffrey Michaels, Barcelona Institute of International Studies & Dept. of War Studies, KCL; LCol Timothy Heck, US Marine Corps Reserve; Dr Matthew Ford, Senior Lecturer, University of Sussex.
• Michaels, “Exploiting China: US Procurement of Chinese Publications, 1949-1973"
• Heck, “Capturing the Lessons in Realtime: Marine Corps History Division’s Collection during the Era of Force Design 2030”
• Ford, “Accidental Archives and the New Ecology of War: From Mainstream Media to Participative War”
11:00-12:15 - Panel 2: Mars, Cleo, and the Courts
Discussant: Dr Nicola Palmer, Reader in Criminal Law, Dickson Poon School of Law, KCL.
Panellists: Professor James Gow, Dept of War Studies, KCL; Professor Robert Hayden, University of Pittsburgh; Dr Iva Vukusic, Universiteit Utrecht; Lina Raslan, University of Law, London.
• Gow and Hayden, “Person-Document — An After Action Report: Using, Being and Becoming - the Ethics of ‘Expert’ Testimony in the First International Criminal Trial”
• Vukusic, “Defense Strategies of Alleged Perpetrators at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY): The Case of Srebrenica”
• Raslan, “Advancing Universal Justice in a Digital World: The Admissibility of Open Source Evidence in the Courts of England and Wales”
12:15-13:30 - Break for lunch
13:30 – 14:45 - Panel 3: Case Studies in Access – Ukraine and Colombia
Discussant: TBC – Dr Matthew Moran, Professor of International Security, KCL (TBC)
Panellists: Dr Liliana Duica-Amaya, Consultant; Professor Dr Oksana Mikheieva, Professor of Sociology, Ukrainian Catholic University (Lviv); Dr Viktoria Sereda, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv); James Gregg, PhD Candidate, University of St Andrews.
• Mikheieva and Sereda, “Dilemmas of War: Localized Knowledge Production in War-Torn Donbas and Annexed Crimea”
• Gregg, “Ethics of Social Media Research: The Sparta Battalion in the Donbas Conflict”
• Duica-Amaya, “FARC Guerrilla Archives: Documenting Landmined Landscapes”
15:00-16:15 - Panel 4: Case Studies in Evidence – Archival, Textual, Visual, Testimonial
Discussant: Dr Rachel Kerr, Prof. of War and Society, Co-Chair, War Crimes Research Group, KCL.
Panellists: Dr Hélène Mutter, Université Libre de Bruxelles; Mariia Golik, PhD Student, School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Center for Russian, Caucasian and Central European Studies; David Foulk, PhD Candidate, Oriel College, University of Oxford.
• Mutter, “Gulf War Memoirs: Thoughts and Representations of War Through Visual Archives - The Role, Position and Responsibility of the artist-researcher”
• Golik, “Filming the Siege of Leningrad: Approaches to the Film Production in 1941-1944 and Their Impact on the Soviet Film Industry Until the End of the 1940s.”
• Foulk, “Memorializing the French Resistance: Resist, Record, Reassess – Alias ‘Alain’”
16:30-17:00 – Wrap Up