The In War’s Wake research network investigates the aftermath of war in cities. This is conceived heuristically as a constellation of the official and unofficial workings of urban conflict and political violence. Thinking generatively from and across South America, the Middle East, Eastern Africa, and the ‘Black Mediterranean’, we aim to examine how political violence reshapes contemporary urban lives, imaginations of urban futures, and experiences of movement, citizenship, and hope. How are legacies of violence inscribed into the urban space and how are they elided? How does urban violence exceed conceptions of the ‘post-conflict’ and disrupt naïve temporalities of a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ war? We will approach these questions through the prism of mobility, belonging, and becoming.

The research network seeks to generate important provocations, trans-national and multi-lingual dialogues, and cross-disciplinary intersections that contribute to discussions about political violence, urban studies, and post-conflict reconstruction among academics, activists, and artists.

Find out about our Lent Term programming here!