Podcasts

How do war stories work? And what do they do to us?

Join members of the Visualising War research group as we explore how war and battle get presented in art, text, film and music. With the help of expert guests, we unpick war stories from all sorts of different periods and places. And we ask how they the tales we tell and the pictures we paint of war influence us as individuals and shape the societies we live in.

Our interviewees include war reporters, artists, video-game designers, museum curators and theatre, film and documentary makers. We also talk to peace campaigners, NGOs and clinical psychologists, to find out how storytelling impacts their work with victims of conflict all around the world. And we interview serving soldiers, veterans, defence trainers and strategists, to find out what narratives of war flourish in their respective worlds and what influence they have.

In addition, we have a range of academics amongst our guests: experts in ancient war poetry, medieval religion, the ‘just war’ tradition, trends in memorialisation, militarism in popular culture, the history of grand strategy-making, human rights, international politics, the psychology of collective action, and processes of identify formation – among many other topics!

If you have ever wanted to think more about how war stories work and what they do to us, tune in here! And don’t forget to subscribe to the show so that you don’t miss an episode. Anyone requiring auto captions can access the podcast via YouTube.

We are grateful to the University of St Andrews and the Institute of Classical Studies for their generous financial support of this podcast series.

Our podcast editor is Zofia Guertin; she is also the creative talent behind our logos and other art work.

Introducing the Ancient Peace Studies Network – Visualising War and Peace

In this episode of the Visualising War and Peace podcast, guest-host Zofia Guertin speaks with Dr. Alice König about her work expanding the Visualising War project to include peace studies. In this conversation, Alice  unveils the groundbreaking Ancient Peace Studies Network—the first of its kind dedicated to examining how peace was understood, experienced, and represented across different ancient cultures.Discover why peace narratives have received far less scholarly attention than war stories, and how Dr. König's team is working to change that by investigating whose voices and experiences are reflected in ancient accounts of peace and reconciliation.What can ancient approaches to conflict resolution teach us about modern peacebuilding? In this thought-provoking special episode, we explore how elite-centered peace narratives shaped societal attitudes in antiquity and continue to influence our understanding of peace today. Dr. König reveals how her interdisciplinary network is "reading against the grain" of ancient sources to uncover ordinary people's lived experiences of peace—voices that have been historically marginalized but might offer valuable insights for contemporary peace literacy.Don't miss our conversation about bridging academic research with creative outreach, as Dr. König shares details about the network's collaboration with a professional theater company, NMT Automatics, and the upcoming multi-authored publication, "New Visions of Ancient Peace." This episode offers a perfect blend of historical scholarship and practical application, demonstrating how ancient wisdom might help us visualize and build more effective paths to peace in our modern world. We hope you enjoy the episode.For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please visit the University of St Andrews' Visualising War website and the Visualising Peace Project.Music composed by Jonathan YoungSound mixing by Zofia Guertin
  1. Introducing the Ancient Peace Studies Network
  2. Ancient war stories and their real-world ramifications
  3. The End of Peacekeeping with Marsha Henry
  4. Curating Peace: the role of museums
  5. Narrative Transformation: storytelling for peace
  6. Between war and peace: military involvement in peacebuilding
  7. Peace and Politics with Lord Jim Wallace
  8. Children, Childhoods and Child-Soldiering: critical lenses on war
  9. Transitional place-making: Palestinian refugee experiences in Lebanon
  10. AI-enabled military technologies: technology, ethics, trust, storytelling

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