Mapping the Wounded Landscape of Swat Valley: from Taliban Violence and Iconoclasm to Social Growth and Reconciliation
How are memories and imaginaries interpreted through heritage?
- Project status
- Ongoing
- Programmes
- Heritage, Dignity and Violence
- Departments
- International
This project aims to map the ways in which Swat Valley communities are recovering from a recent history of violence and fear experienced during the Taliban insurgency. It is looking to articulate the spatial rearrangements enacted by the Taliban and the gendered memories and imaginaries of the conflict as interpreted through the optics of the damaged, blasted and sometimes rehabilitated heritage spaces in the valley. The research team is seeking to bring to the fore the traces of violence and destruction through community-based projects that also reclaim sense of place and reanimate the significance of the Taliban-damaged heritage within a peace building process in Swat.
Research Team: Dr Daanish Mustafa, King's College London; Dr Sarah De Nardi, Western Sydney University; Dr James Caron, SOAS University of London; Professor Arab Naz, University of Malakand, Pakistan