This show invites research stu­dents based in Brighton to talk about what they have been invest­ig­at­ing and why it is import­ant. Between the dis­cus­sion they can play their favour­ite music that may or may not be rel­ev­ant to their research..

The top­ics will range across dif­fer­ent sub­jects with the aim to make the show inter­est­ing and access­ible to people who do not know any­thing about the sub­ject as well as to those already famil­iar with the topics.

The show seeks to bring the often hid­den world of post-graduate research into a more pub­lic forum in order to provide an edu­ca­tional resource for listen­ers and to act as a form of research com­munity inform­ing other stu­dents and act­iv­ists of debates that may be rel­ev­ant to them.

The pro­gramme con­tent presents the par­tic­u­lar view­point of each researcher that at times chal­lenges our exist­ing con­cep­tions of famil­iar themes.

Where pos­sible links are provided so that con­trib­ut­ors to the show can be con­tac­ted by listen­ers who will also be able to access any pub­lic­a­tions and so on.

The next few shows lined up include the gen­o­cide of mem­bers of a polit­ical party in Colom­bia, Hun­garian nation­al­ism and polit­ical act­iv­ism, and how gender is per­formed in the military.

Jonathan New­man

 

The Shows:

Andrei Gomez-Suarez — The destruc­tion of the Union Pat­ri­ot­ica in Colom­bia (1980’s — 2010)

Broad­cast of My Research Records — Andrei Gomez-Suarez

 

Ves­selina Ratcheva — Being Nation­al­ist in Bulgaria

 

 Tom Bent­ley — Apo­lo­getic States

Broad­cast of My Research Records — Tom Bentley

Andrei Gomez-Suarez 

Broad­cast of My Research Records — Andrei Gomez-Suarez

Bio­graphy:

I stud­ied Polit­ical Sci­ence and read a Gradu­ate Dip­loma in Armed Con­flict Res­ol­u­tion at Los Andes Uni­ver­sity (Bogotá), lec­tured Polit­ics at the Uni­ver­sity of Cauca (Popayán, South­ern Colom­bia) dur­ing 2002 and Inter­na­tional Rela­tions at Exter­n­ado Uni­ver­sity (Bogotá) from 2004 to 2005. Awar­ded the Brit­ish Cheven­ing Schol­ar­ship by the Brit­ish Coun­cil to study a Ma in Con­tem­por­ary War and Peace Stud­ies at Uni­ver­sity of Sus­sex, cur­rently reads a DPhil in Inter­na­tional Rela­tions at the Uni­ver­sity of Sus­sex. His work on the gen­o­cide of the Unión Pat­riót­ica in Colom­bia has been pub­lished in the Journal of Gen­o­cide Research and State Viol­ence and Gen­o­cide in Latin Amer­ica, a book edited by Henry Hut­ten­back, Mar­cia Esparza and Daniel Fier­estein (Rout­ledge 2010).

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE UNION PATRIOTICA IN COLOMBIA (1980’s –2010)

Syn­op­sis:

This thesis is a cri­tique of the idea that gen­o­cide is a domestic pro­cess and that only some groups are worthy of pro­tec­tion against gen­o­cide. By look­ing at the destruc­tion of the Unión Pat­riót­ica in the con-text of a gen­o­cidal geo­pol­it­ical con­junc­ture, in which a polar­ised cir­cu­la­tion of sym­pathy, anti­pathy, indif­fer­ence and obli­vion occurred, the thesis not only chal­lenges the notion that gen­o­cides occur in loc­a­tions detached from the inter­na­tional com­munity, but also unveils how affect is mobil­ised through nar­rat­ives which sup­port and con­test this fantasy. Thus, the thesis con­tends that geo­pol­it­ical nar­rat­ives can help solid­ify a gen­o­cidal con­junc­ture by allow­ing the amal­gam­a­tion of vari­ous act­ors into a per­pet­rator bloc, but also dis­in­teg­rate it by bring­ing about a fluid transna­tional net­work of res­ist­ance to gen­o­cide. In con­trast to the two-dimensional geo­pol­it­ical imagery that gen­o­cide takes place within the bor­ders of the nation-state, it is argued, instead, that a frag­men­ted geo­graphy, gal­van­ised by a con­tinu­ous victimisation-resistance spiral that links dif­fer­ent act­ors, places, and dra­mas together, enables gen­o­cide to unfold. The thesis there­fore pro­poses con-textualisation as a new method to research gen­o­cide as a geo­pol­it­ical phenomenon.

 Music

 

• Pink Floyd    Chapter 24            The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

• R.E.M.          Find The River     Auto­matic For The People

• Vivi­aldi         L’inverno-Allegro  Henryk Szeryng-English Cham­ber Orches­tra — Le Quarttro Sta­gioni 

• Chopin          Étude #12 In C Minor, Op. 10/12, CT 25, “Revolu­tion­ary”  - Etudes, Op. 10 & 25

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Ves­selina Ratcheva

Research Interests

My research cur­rently focuses on what it means to be nation­al­ist and  how it is dif­fer­ent from banal every­day forms of nation­al­ism (although in the pro­cess of field­work it became obvi­ous how the two were at least to a degree con­nec­ted). My aim is to provide fresh view on South East­ern Europe from some of the earli­est ste­reo­types about it. While I was ini­tially reluct­ant to delve into such a ste­reo­typ­ical topic I slowly real­ised that there was very little writ­ten on right­ist, nation­al­ist or con­ser­vat­ive organ­isa­tions because of the ideo­lo­gical bias of West­ern aca­demia. Yet the topic raises inter­est­ing issues: is the form of right wing act­iv­ism dif­fer­ent from left wing act­iv­ism? Is that part of what sep­ar­ates them? Fur­ther­more, how do we under­stand an insist­ence of the primacy of eth­nic iden­ti­fic­a­tion in a world that is pre­sumed to have moved on from such matters?

My field­work raised issues about Bul­garian minor­it­ies in Ser­bia, con­tinu­ing ten­sions with Mace­do­nia, polit­ics and the media, cha­ris­matic lead­er­ship, strug­gling with the rais­ing issue of the Roma in East­ern Europe and import­antly his­tory and folk­lore viewed as ‘the story of a people’. It also allowed me to wit­ness a peti­tion for a ref­er­en­dum against Turkey’s entry into the EU.

In my research I hope to touch upon the import­ance of start­ing to view the region through the full breadth of prob­lem­atic that inform its cur­rent con­di­tions, mean­ing not only the Cold War and the fall of com­mun­ism, but also the other import­ant ‘post-’, namely the Otto­man empire.

As part of the writ­ing up pro­cess of my PhD I will be main­tain­ing a blog at  www.vesselina.co.uk relat­ing to issues and events per­tin­ent to my field site. Through it I hope to not only pub­lish com­ments on issues that I find inter­st­ing, but in some cases pub­lish mater­i­als that would rarely if ever get trans­lated into English.

Music

• White Stripes — One More Cup of Cof­fee 

• Neshto ke te pitam babo  “I will ask you some­thing grandma” 

It’s a song that I learned to sing on field­work, it refers to a hero of the organ­isa­tion that I stud­ied, the organ­isa­tion has a yearly hike which comem­or­ates his death and ends at his gravesite.

• LOGO 5 + DJ Dark­step — Petiletka

The song expresses youth cul­ture in Bul­garia to some degree and its response to times of trans­ition –it’s talk­ing about trans­ition from socialism

• Queen — Innuendo

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Tom Bent­ley

Broad­cast of My Research Records — Tom Bentley

My thesis is a case study ana­lysis of apo­lo­gies from colo­nial states to their former colon­ies.  I focus on how the con­trite gov­ern­ments nar­rate par­tic­u­lar stor­ies about the past and how these his­tor­ical ‘memor­ies’ speak to con­tem­por­ary polit­ical and ideo­lo­gical imper­at­ives.  I argue that, des­pite the apo­lo­gies, gov­ern­ments con­tinue to use vocab­u­lar­ies that san­it­ise, obscure and even glor­ify both the colo­nial past and cur­rent pat­terns of dom­in­a­tion.  Moreover, politi­cians fre­quently util­ise apo­lo­gies in ways that are con­du­cive to their own short term interest.

My case stud­ies include:

The 2002 Bel­gian apo­logy for the assas­sin­a­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter of the Repub­lic of Congo, Patrice Lumumba

The 2008 Italian apo­logy to Libya for colonialism

The 2004 Ger­man apo­logy for the gen­o­cide of the Herero people (in cur­rent day Namibia)

The 2010 Brit­ish apo­logy for Bloody Sunday in North­ern Ireland

Key words:  apo­logy, colo­ni­al­ism, col­lect­ive memory, his­tor­ical narrative

 

Music

Pink Floyd – Wish you were here

Bruce Spring­steen — The Ghost of Tom Joad

Eels – Last stop: this town

Third Eye Blind – God of wine

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