Visualising War and Peace

In this episode, Alice and Nicolas interview members of NMT Automatics , a theatre company which specialises in updating ancient myths for modern audiences. Co-founders Jennie Dunne and Jonathan Young have been working with director Andres Velasquez and dramaturg Mairin O'Hagan to develop a new play, Tempus Fugit: Troy and Us , which weaves together an Ancient Greek war story from Homer'...

In this episode, Alice and Nicolas interview the editors of Ancient Warfare Magazine - Jasper Oorthuys and Murray Dahm. Founded in 2007, Ancient Warfare examines the military history of many different ancient cultures in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia, with a particular focus on Greece and Rome from around 1200BC to 600AD. It has thousands of readers all around the world – an...

In this episode, Alice interviews artist Jill Calder , author James Robertson and illustrator/book designer  Jim Hutcheson , who is Creative Director at the Scottish publishing company Birlinn Books .  One summer, Jim was exploring the wares in a small bookshop in Spain when he came across an illustrated history of the life of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, a Castilian knight also known as ‘El Cid’ or ‘El...

In this episode, Alice and Nicolas interview Prof. Kate McLoughlin. A Professor of English at Oxford University and Tutorial Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Kate works on the representation of war in literature in many different genres, from the ancient world to the present day. Among other books, she is the author of Martha Gellhorn: The War Writer in the Field and in the Text , which explor...

How do crisis simulations help us understand strategy and decision-making processes?  Crisis simulation exercises can take many forms, from complex live wargame events to on-screen and multi-week crisis scenarios. What is the role and utility of crisis simulations in the understanding, teaching, and making of strategy? Can wargames be used as a predictive tool, or should their utility be centred a...

What are the cultural legacies of visualising war through wargames?  Wargames are not a new phenomenon; in military exercises, as tactical plays tested on maps and as entertainment spectacles, wargames have been with us from ancient times. Studying wargames allows us to better understand the fog of war, as well as giving us nuanced insights into the processes by which military strategy is visualis...

In this week's episode, Alice and Nicolas interview librettist Susan Werbe and composer Kirsten Volness about musical representations of war. In particular, Susan and Kirsten discuss the opera they created with colleague Kate Holland, Letters That You Will Not Get: Women's Voices from the Great War . As Susan explains, most representations of WW1 have been white, male and Eurocentric - b...

In this week's episode, Alice and Nicolas interview actor and playwright Jonathan Guy Lewis. Jonny joined the army on leaving university, but illness halted his training and after months in hospital he changed direction and embarked on an acting career. His military experiences came in handy when he was cast as Sgt Chris McCleod in the TV series Soldier Soldier , but they have also informed h...

In this week's episode, Alice and Nicolas interview Harry Parker, an artist, former army officer, and author of Anatomy of a Soldier - a creative and powerful novel that narrates the experiences of fictional soldier Tom Barnes as he deploys to war and gets badly injured by an IED. Harry was himself injured by an IED while on tour in Afghanistan, losing both legs, and in many ways the novel dr...

In this week's episode, Alice and Nicolas interview dancer and choreographer Rosie Kay. Rosie began dancing at the age of three, founding the Rosie Kay Dance Company in 2004. With multiple award winning shows to her name, Rosie suffered a serious knee injury in 2006,  and this got her thinking about other jobs which involve bodily risk. She ended up embedding with an infantry battalion to res...

In this week's episode, Alice and Nicolas interview Dr Mike Martin, author of An Intimate War: an Oral History of the Helmand Conflict, 1978-2012   and Why We Fight .  Mike is a former British Army officer who was deployed to Afghanistan multiple times. A fluent Pashto speaker, Mike's role involved researching local culture and history to help inform military operations in the region. He...

In this week's episode, Alice and Nicolas interview Eleanor Head, the Head of the Imperial War Museum's Institute. The Imperial War Museum in London was founded during the First World War, and it is now part of a larger group of museums and historic attractions dotted around the UK: the Churchill War Rooms and HMS Belfast in London, the Imperial War Museum at Duxford, and the Imperial Wa...

In this week's episode, Alice and Nicolas interview Iraqi artist Rana Ibrahim. Rana trained as an archaeologist and museum curator; but her childhood and early adulthood were dominated by conflict, and she ended up seeking refuge as a forced migrant in the UK following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. After settling in Oxford, she founded the Iraqi Women, Art and War Group , a community p...

In this week's episode, Alice and Nicolas interview Roman historian Dr Jon Coulston. Jon is an expert on Roman military culture and ancient representations of war. He gives us a fascinating introduction to one of the most detailed and influential military monuments to survive from the Roman Empire: Trajan's column. Commemorating the emperor Trajan's victory over King Decebalus of Da...

In this week's episode, Alice and Nicolas interview photojournalist Hugh Kinsella Cunningham. Hugh has spent the past two years documenting humanitarian crises in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He explains some of the logistical challenges which conflict photographers face and how conflict photography has changed in recent decades. Hugh is passionate about making forgotten or unseen confli...

In this week's episode, Alice and Nicolas interview artist Diana Forster. Diana has created some extraordinary conflict art based around her mother's experiences of being forcibly displaced and imprisoned in labour camps in Soviet Russia during  World War 2. Through Diana's work, we explore the way that visual artists can take relatively unknown war stories and create dynamic new wa...

In this episode, Alice and Nicolas interview Lady Lucy French, OBE, about Never Such Innocence, a charity she founded in 2014 to give children and young people a voice on conflict. Participants come from all around the globe and they use art, public speaking, poetry and song to share how they feel about war and its impacts. Through workshops, community events and public award ceremonies, Never Suc...

In this episode, Alice and Nicolas introduce their colleagues Dr. Laura Mills and Dr. Ken Mavor, who are part of the Visualising War research team at the University of St Andrews. Laura explains what her background in International Relations brings to the project; and Ken discusses what his study of psychology can contribute to our understanding of how war stories work and what they do to us. They...

Welcome to the Visualising War podcast! In our introductory episode, Dr. Alice König and Dr. Nicolas Wiater explain what their exciting multidisciplinary project is all about. They discuss what we can learn by exploring past and present habits of representing war - and why it is important to examine how war stories work and what they do to us. They talk about their aims for the podcast, the exciti...