Directed by Dr Alice König, the Visualising War project studies habits of imagining, understanding, representing and approaching conflict, across time and space. As well as analysing how war stories work in lots of different media, we examine what impact they have on us, as individuals and societies. Our research looks particularly at the ‘feedback loop’ between narrative and reality: as we discuss on our podcast, the stories that we tell about conflict and its aftermath usually reflect reality, up to a point, but they also help to shape it, by influencing how people think, feel and behave.
‘Visualising Peace’ is a Vertically Integrated Project based at the University of St Andrews. We are a cross-disciplinary team of students, with expertise in a wide range of disciplines, who are working together to expand the scope of the Visualising War project. Shifting focus from how representations of war impact broader attitudes towards conflict, we are investigating conceptualizations of peace across different academic disciplines and broader domains of human activity. Our aim is to research, challenge and stretch habits of visualising peace, and to spark more conversations about how it can be promoted, and what peace-building and peace-keeping actually involve. Among other projects, we have created a virtual Museum of Peace to explore the diversity of ways in which peace and peace-building can be experienced, imagined, narrated, embodied, created and sustained.
Hugh Kinsella Cunningham is an award-winning photojournalist, who has published work with National Geographic, The Guardian, BBC News, The Sunday Times Magazine, The United Nations and Save the Children. A grantee of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, he was a finalist for the Amnesty International Media Awards in 2022 and 2023 and won first prize in the documentary category of the Sony World Photography Awards 2023. Hugh’s recent publications include These Women are Bringing Some Peace to War-Stricken Congo and Actors of Change: Female Activists Fight for Peace in the DRC. His project on the women’s peace movement in Congo was created with writer Camille Maubert and produced with local correspondent Sifa Bahati.
Picturing Peace in Congo was co-curated by Hugh Kinsella Cunningham, Camille Maubert, Dr Alice König and students in the 2022-3 cohort of the University of St Andrews’ Visualising Peace project. Particular thanks go to Viktor Lopez-Roso and Mary Woodcock Kroble for their contributions to this website, and to Margaux de Seze for her design work on our exhibition brochure. We are grateful to the University of St Andrews for supporting this project with Research Impact and Innovation funding, and to the Byre Theatre for hosting our in-person exhibition.