On 15 January 2025, Dr. Myriam Dalal presented her research on the topic of political violence and how to approach such historical events and topics through public history practices and artistic research.
During this research seminar, Dalal presented the definitions of public history and artistic research and identified the main challenges in incorporating these practices in research projects across the humanities field more broadly and history more specifically. By expanding on two case studies from her previous and current work, Dalal presented the approach she used in tackling the history of the Lebanese civil war and its photojournalistic documentation (the subject of her PhD thesis), as well as the history of migration/exile and the displacement/belonging experience in Luxembourg (her current project at the University of Luxembourg).
Questions from colleagues at the Center for Contemporary and Digital History were then discussed how to represent or deal with silence from participants, what considerations to have/trainings to consider in order to address the mental health impact of such projects on both the participants and the project leaders, and how to anticipate the social impact before making this research public. The engaging conversation also delved into the importance of historical accuracy in the presentation of artistic outputs and accepting, applying and practice the concept of shared authority by both artists, project participants and lead researchers.