The Violence, Trauma and Memory research strand sustained an active, interdisciplinary programme across 2025–26, bringing together literary, historical, theological, anthropological, and clinical perspectives on trauma, violence and memory. Year 1 of the group’s activities focused specifically on identifying existing research synergies across the university’s departments, centres and research institutes, as well as laying the foundations for future collaborative projects.
Michaelmas Term opened with a talk by Luigi Pinton (Oxford), cross-listed with MLaC, on transgenerational memory and second-hand storytelling in the writing of Jewish post-WWII author Helena Janeczek. This was followed by a well-attended hybrid seminar with Brian Powers (Durham, Theology; Director of the International Centre for Moral Injury) and Andrea Lambell (Durham, Anthropology), examining the causes and impacts of moral injury and extending the group's engagement with ethics, bioculture, mental health, and violence.
Epiphany Term featured the group's major event of the year, organised by co-lead Katrin Wehling-Giorgi: ‘World Literature and Epigenetics: Women Narrating Trauma,’ an international conference co-organised with the Affective Experience Lab and supported by the IMH and grants from the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies (University of London) and the Society of Italian Studies. Speakers spanning psychology, medical anthropology and literary scholarship — including Clare Hanson, Tiziana de Rogatis, Hannie Lawlor, Sana Saboowala, Nadja Reissland, and award-winning Italian-Somali writer Igiaba Scego — showed that while epigenetics offers growing but largely correlational evidence for the transmission of trauma across generations, literary and oral narratives remain essential for capturing its relational, embodied, and culturally specific dimensions (as further reflected on in The Polyphony). The workshop’s findings directly feed into Katrin Wehling-Giorgi's forthcoming monograph focusing on the insights post-WWII literature can afford into women’s lived experience of trauma, as well as laying the foundations for a future Horizon bid with collaborators in Italy and supporting a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship application.
Easter Term closed with Co-Lead Corinne Saunders’ participation in the roundtable at the major international conference ‘Daphne and her Sisters: Framing Gendered Violence,’ and the annual PGR Showcase, foregrounding postgraduate research within the group’s remit.
Looking ahead, 2026–27 builds on the group’s interests in transgenerational trauma, gendered violence, and embodiment and memory, extending them through closer collaboration with the International Centre for Moral Injury and the Indian Network for Memory Studies, deeper integration with neuropsychiatric, feminist and phenomenological approaches to health and cognition, and productive cross-sector exchange.
Check out our events programme for this academic year here.Back to main page
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