Project title
RePast : Strengthening European integration through the analysis of conflict discourses: revisiting the past, anticipating the future
Funder
EC
Funding Program
Horizon 2020, CULT-COOP-02-2017, European Commission
H2020
Award URL
https://www.repast.eu/
Funding code
769252
Start date
May 1, 2018
Expected Completion
2021-10-31
Description
RePAST aims at investigating how European societies deal with their troubled pasts today through the analysis of conflict discourses rooted in those pasts, with a view on the impact of those discourses on European integration. It will implement actions and propose strategies, both at the levels of policy-making and civil society, for reflecting upon these discourses to strengthen European integration. The project addresses directly the specific challenge and scope of the topic CULT-COOP-02-2017, focusing on civil society, informal education and political discourses. The methodological approach of RePAST is based on (i) multidisciplinarity, (ii) crosscountry comparative analysis and (iii) innovative actions for citizens’ engagement with troubled pasts. First, conflict discourses rooted in troubled pasts will be studied in four fundamental spaces of civil society and sources of informal education: (a) history (oral and official), (b) media (journalistic- and citizen-led media), (c) art and culture, (d) politics (formal and informal politics). It will also take into account how the current crisis in its multiple forms (economic crisis, refugee crisis, political crisis) mediates these narratives. RePAST brings the various disciplines in dialogue with each other on the ground of an empirical study across the geographical and historical spectrum. Second, RePAST will study comparatively eight cases of countries whose troubled pasts sit squarely on legacies that still endanger European integration today: Cyprus, Germany, Poland, Greece, Bosnia, Kosovo, Ireland, and Spain. Lastly, RePAST emphasizes the active engagement of memory agents through a series of innovative actions for creating participatory experiences, i.e. interactive storytelling, research tool for analysis on memory and conflict, workshops for cultural tourism professionals, a treasure-hunt game to discover troubled pasts, and digital games for renegotiating troubled pasts.