British Academy essay collection tackles experiences of violence worldwide

The British Academy has published a collection of essays by researchers in the humanities and social sciences as part of its multi-year Experiencing Violence project, aiming to develop a better understanding of how violence is defined, and considering how it ranges from the spectacular to the everyday, inflicted against people, objects, or symbols.

The collection includes contributions from Fellows of the British Academy and both current and former British Academy award holders who consider a range of topics, from global governmental inaction over the ‘shadow pandemic’ of gender-based violence, to the ways in which the climate crisis is leading to increasing violence and conflict worldwide.

Researchers examine closely how the environment, the state, gender, education, media, art, and cultural heritage can shape – directly and indirectly – different experiences of violence and help us to define it.

Professor Simon Goldhill FBA, Foreign Secretary of the British Academy, said:

“Violence is an everyday reality for a large proportion of people around the world. Research in the humanities and social sciences can be of enormous benefit by helping understand the experience of violence and the moral and political frameworks – as well as the different perpetrators – that enable it.

“The articles included in the publication provide critical reflections and examine the ways in which we approach the understanding of violence and seek to explain and interpret it, embracing the full complexity of violence as a social, historical and political phenomenon, and the implications that this has for research and policy engagement.

“Researchers who contributed to this publication are helping to analyse how violence is understood in the public imagination and in public policymaking.”