Picturing Peace: Photography, Conflict Transformation, and Peacebuilding

Picturing Peace: Photography, Conflict Transformation, and Peacebuilding

Edited by Tom Allbeson, Pippa Oldfield & Jolyon Mitchell

"Can images help us imagine peace in a world plagued by war?  Through a series of masterful essays, co-authored by leading scholars and award-winning photographers, this ground-breaking volume reminds us that making peace is also about visualising peace, about seeing how peace might work in pictures - a work just as arduous as it is noble and just as fragile as it is necessary. A must-read!"  - Lilie Chouliaraki, Chair in Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

Join Prof Jonathan Long and colleagues from the Durham Centre for Visual Arts and Culture (CVAC) from across our Faculties at Durham, for a gathering at St John's College, for discussions with the editors, exploring learnings and stories from this remarkable new book!  

'Picturing Peace' provides critical new insights into the relationship between photography and peace by considering how making and sharing images can contribute to conflict transformation and peacebuilding.

Key Features and Highlights

• Key case studies interrogate the relationship between peace and photography, via individual photographers, commercial organizations, state institutions, and NGOs
• Broad historical and geographic scope, covering: First World War peace activism, Vietnam and Cold War anti-nuclear protests, and contemporary photography from post-conflict societies - Iraq, Rwanda, Colombia, Bangladesh, and the Balkans
• Engages with urgent debates surrounding conflict, human rights activism and protest, especially concerning current protest movements in the Middle East Considers the politics of representation, methods of participatory photography, and decolonising the photographic gaze - suitable for both
  practice-based photography courses as well as theoretical modules

More info in our Picturing Peace flyer

All welcome.  

Dr Tom Allbeson is Reader in Media & Photographic History at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture (Cardiff University) and co-editor of the Journal of War and Culture Studies.  His research concerns media history and visual culture in contemporary Europe and the US with specialisms in photojournalism and conflict, visual culture and reconstruction, collective memory in post-conflict societies, and urban history. 

Dr Pippa Oldfield is a photography curator and historian. She is Senior Lecturer in Photography at Teesside University, UK, and former Head of Programme at Impressions Gallery, Bradford. She is the author of 'Photography and War' (Reaktion, 2019) and has curated numerous exhibitions on the topic of conflict and its aftermath including 'Bringing the War Home: Photographic Responses to Recent Conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan' and 'No Man’s Land: Women’s Photographic Viewpoints on the First World War'.

Professor Jolyon Mitchell's research and teaching focuses on: Religion, Violence and Peacebuilding with particular reference to the arts (e.g. film, theatre, radio, visual arts as well as other new and old media). He has written and published extensively in these and related areas (e.g. the uses of different media arts in promoting peace and inciting violence; Communication Ethics; Theology & the Arts; Media, Religion and Culture; Memory, History and Religion).  He currently serves as Director for the Centre for Theology and Public Issues (CTPI) at University of Edinburgh, and President, Theology and Religious Studies - UK (TRS UK).  

Dr Jennifer Wallace studied both Classics and English for my undergraduate degree in Cambridge and wrote a doctorate on Romantic Hellenism. she took up my current post, as Harris Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Peterhouse, and affiliated lecturer in the Faculty of English, in 1995. Her interest in Greece has led her to serve since 2010 on the jury of the annual London Hellenic Prize (an award given to a book related in some way to Greece, ancient or modern) and on the production committee of the Cambridge Greek Play. She has organised four international conferences in Cambridge, supported by the Judith E Wilson fund, on the performance of Greek tragedy, bringing together academics and theatre practitioners. She is an Associate Editor of the Classical Receptions Journal (OUP), a member of the Advisory Board of the Oxford Classical Reception Commentaries, and sits on the Management Committee of the Cambridge Centre for Greek Studies.

Prof Jonathan Long has published extensively on twentieth-century German and Austrian literature, including acclaimed monographs on Thomas Bernhard and W. G. Sebald, and articles on Bertolt Brecht, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Monika Maron, Gerhard Fritsch, Hans Lebert, Dieter Kühn, and others. In 2005 he was awarded a £50,000 Philip Leverhulme Prize in recognition of international research achievement and the Max Kade Prize for Best Article in Modern Austrian Literature. He was a founder member of the Durham Centre for Advanced Photography Studies, and is Director of the Centre for Visual Arts and Culture.  His current research focuses on the photography of the inter-war period, with a particular interest in the photographic book in the Weimar Republic. 

Book Launch and round table discussion: 'Photography, Conflict Transformation, and Peacebuilding' (Bloomsbury, 2025)

• St John’s College, 3 South Bailey, Durham, DH1 3RJ
• 17:00 seminar and discussions; 18:00 drinks reception 

All welcome.  We look forward to you joining us on 5th March!

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