Diverse Perspectives on a Global Conflict: Migrant Voices and Living Legacies of World War One

Dr Philip McDermott (Sociology Ulster) in partnership with the North-West Migrants Forum (Derry-Londonderry)

The project aims to engage individuals from minority ethnic and migrant communities, as well as organisations representing such communities, with the current social debate on the contemporary impact of WWI. Through participatory workshops and a jointly-produced exhibition and a video, the project will bring life to alternative ‘living legacies’ of WWI. The project will investigate migrants’ understandings of impact of WWI in their country of origin as well as their perspectives on WWI’s legacy in contemporary Northern Ireland. In this way, the research throws light on transnational experiences and broadens knowledge of the war’s contemporary legacy locally.

The project will:   

1) Engage migrants living in Northern Ireland with the debates around the contemporary legacy of WWI on both their country of origin and Northern Ireland.

2) Produce an exhibition, narrated through the eyes of participants, about the impact of WWI on the migrants’ country/region of origin and Northern Ireland.

3) Build capacity and skills among migrant communities so that they can engage more fully with issues which they might have previously felt marginalised from. 

4) Provide global perspectives on the contemporary legacies of WWI and thus broaden understandings for all communities in Northern Ireland.

5) Act as a form of critical heritage which will add to knowledge and scholarship on the nature of the living legacy of WWI through the investigation of the complexity of identity and memory.

6) Provide case studies which will illuminate how identities are often multidimensional and can transcend places and periods of time.

Contacts

Philip McDermott (p.mcdermott@ulster.ac.uk)

North West Migrants Forum (info@nwmf.org.uk) 

Please click here to vist the website.

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Top left: Ermias at the briefing session for the "Diverse Perspectives on a Global Conflict" project, at North West Migrants Forum, Derry, April 2017