Liberia: Legacies of Peace
- Submitting institution
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University of St Andrews
- Unit of assessment
- 19 - Politics and International Studies
- Output identifier
- 272935462
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
-
-
- Location
- -
- Brief description of type
- Documentary short film series
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2019
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
-
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Double weighting is requested as this output is the result of the undertaking of a complex, extended and multi-layered process of creative investigation by an individual. These five documentary films have a combined run equal to the length of a feature film of 95 minutes. They emerge from an extended, sustained research project on Legacies of Peace in Liberia which involved looking at complex issues in considerable depth from multiple perspectives.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Liberia: Legacies of Peace is an award-winning documentary short film series comprising five films: Best Man Corner (youth livelihood trajectories in the motorcycle taxi sector); Diamond Boys (conflict impacts on artisanal mining); Peace Hut (women’s grass-roots peace activism); Pink Panther (post-war gender mainstreaming); and, 540 (unfinished ex-combatant reintegration). Each reflects diverse data collection methods: sited ethnography, participant observation, focus groups, participatory action research, and semi-structured interviews with 160 ex-combatants, conflict-affected youth, peace activists, miners, marketeers, and civil society representatives.
The series asks: what does the everyday work of building peace after war entail? If peace is not an event, but an imperfect and unfinished process, then to whom does the unfinished work of building peace fall? As a research output, it is part of a critical effort to broaden recognition and prioritization of bottom-up peacebuilding actors and contributions, and to reflexively engage with how core peacebuilding concepts like sustainability, inclusivity, and participation are imagined.
The films’ research insights have been effectively shared through dissemination across multiple platforms, including invited screenings by the UK Permanent Mission to the United Nations, UNICEF, the United Nations University, and Sweden’s government agency for peace, security and development, plus numerous international screenings at think tanks and universities. In the UK, the films were selected for inclusion in the V&A Culture in Crisis digital portal. Internationally, the films have received official selections and awards at competitive film festivals, including Film for Peace (Toronto), Ethnografilm (Paris), MotoTematica (Rome), Docs without Borders, and Edinburgh Docufest. Externally-funded screenings occurred across 12 Liberian sites as part of researcher-initiated and externally-funded dialogue groups, designed to redress social exclusion of conflict-affected youth. Public, free viewing of the series through the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies additionally includes teaching tools, such as suggested discussion questions and supplementary reading.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
