R.W.K. (Werner) Distler, Dr

Current:

09/2023 – 12/2023 Principal Investigator Research Project: Hidden Archives of Peace and Conflict (Funding: Gratama Foundation Groningen). University of Groningen (Netherlands)

Topic:

Official archives of states and International Organizations (IOs) are important sites of research for International Relations, particularly on intra- and inter-state conflicts, violence, and efforts to build peace. Beyond research, they are also physical spaces where individual, institutional, and collective memories reside. These memories can play a decisive societal role in supporting a peaceful future, with archives functioning as democratic spaces, making knowledge and debates available to a wider public. While states and IOs have the financial means and experience to keep archival records and make data accessible, many key documents and other relevant sources of knowledge on conflict and war are hidden or already lost. Sources from individual and collective non-state actors like political parties, militias, resistance and social movements, non-governmental organizations, or from the international personnel participating in international peacebuilding missions are often kept in remote or private spaces. The lack of access to these important sources is not only a loss for academic research in the disciplines of IR or Global History. First and foremost it is a loss for the concerned societies, which cannot access and activate knowledge linked to memorialization of violence, conflict, and peace, as key sources for the constitution of collective identities.

To avoid the loss of further archives, urgent action for access and preservation is necessary. The project “Hidden Archives of Peace and Conflict” (four months, September – December 2023) at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Groningen will focus on hidden archives in two distinct project components, first in an international workshop in December 2023, and second through the analysis of a private collection of a former UN official.

Past:

03/2020 – 02/2022 Co-Principal Investigator International Cooperation Project: No access. How the state of peacebuilding archives undermines democracy. With Katrin Travouillon, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. (Funding: German Research Foundation). University of Marburg (Germany).

09/2020 – 04/2021 Principal Investigator Pilot Study: Knowledge and Peacebuilding. The Epistemic Practice of the German Parliament in the Context of Peacebuilding- and Stabilization Mandates for UN and EU Missions in Mali (2013 – 2019). (Funding: German Foundation for Peace Research). University of Marburg (Germany)