RePast – Revisiting the Past, Anticipating the Future
RePAST aims at investigating how European societies deal with their troubled pasts today through the analysis of conflict discourses rooted in those pasts, with a view on the impact of those discourses on European integration. It will implement actions and propose strategies, both at the levels of policy-making and civil society, for reflecting upon these discourses to strengthen European integration. The project addresses directly the specific challenge and scope of the topic CULT-COOP-02-2017, focusing on civil society, informal education and political discourses. The methodological approach of RePAST is based on (i) multidisciplinarity, (ii) cross-country comparative analysis and (iii) innovative actions for citizens’ engagement with troubled pasts. First, conflict discourses rooted in troubled pasts will be studied in four fundamental spaces of civil society and sources of informal education: (a) history (oral and official), (b) media (journalistic- and citizen-led media), (c) art and culture, (d) politics (formal and informal politics).
It will also take into account how the current crisis in its multiple forms (economic crisis, refugee crisis, political crisis) mediates these narratives. RePAST brings the various disciplines in dialogue with each other on the ground of an empirical study across the geographical and historical spectrum. Second, RePAST will study comparatively eight cases of countries whose troubled pasts sit squarely on legacies that still endanger European integration today: Cyprus, Germany, Poland, Greece, Bosnia, Kosovo, Ireland, and Spain. Lastly, RePAST emphasizes the active engagement of memory agents through a series of innovative actions for creating participatory experiences, i.e. interactive storytelling, research tool for analysis on memory and conflict, workshops for cultural tourism professionals, a treasure-hunt game to discover troubled pasts, and digital games for renegotiating troubled pasts.
Start Date
01/05/2018
Duration
36 Months
Budget
2 499 890.91 EURO
Coordinator
Dr. Dimitra Milioni
Work Packages
Project Management
| Start Month | End Month |
| 1 | 36 |
Objectives:
- Effective and efficient organisational, administrative and financial management of the project, including the assessment of risks to avoid delays, and implementing conflict resolution if required.
- Coordination of all work packages and tasks.
- Ensure the project meets all of its objectives and delivers high-quality outputs and excellence in science to specification,
on time, and to budget. - Manage good working relations and information flows with the European Commission and other stakeholders.
- Effective management of knowledge created, data collected, and project documentation, and monitor project activities
in terms of ethical considerations and gender balance considerations.
Deliverables:
| Title | Month | |
| 1 | Data Management Plan | 6 |
| 2 | Risk Management Plan | 2 |
| 3 | Gender Management Strategy | 3 |
| 4 | Full Data Management Plan | 36 |
Troubled Pasts in Official and Oral History
| Start Month | End Month |
| 2 | 20 |
Objectives:
- To reflect on the role of historians as one of many history agents and the transformation of the role of the historian in
academia and the public sphere as public intellectual. - To study revisionist historiographical trends in terms of contested pasts and their political and social dimensions and
to evaluate the impact of historical discourses on contemporary issues through the reinterpretation and appropriation
of historical analysis. - To collect and document oral histories through interviews with eye-witness participants regarding past historic events,
whose perspectives might not otherwise have been recorded. - Τo identify and classify dominant narrative themes from a variety of aspects (political, societal, religious) within
specific instances: milestone events, commemoration and apology instances, reparation assertions etc. - Τo investigate the impact of past conflicts on opinions and attitudes of “ordinary people” according to European
integration, gender aspects and the multi-level crisis.
Deliverables:
| Title | Month | |
| 1 | Report on the historical events of each country’s troubled pasts for further analysis | 3 |
| 2 | Selected and analysed documentation and visual sources for project’s data platform | 14 |
| 3 | Recordings and transcripts of the interviews | 16 |
| 4 | Four syllabi of academic courses | 17 |
Troubled Pasts in Journalistic and Citizen-Led Media
| Start Month | End Month |
| 4 | 21 |
Objectives:
- To map the role of journalistic and citizen-led media in dealing with the past and trace the implications for EU
integration. - To examine how journalistic and citizen-led media environments give rise to mediated discourses of troubled pasts
- To create best practice recommendations for media practitioners, policy-makers and media regulatory bodies in order
to negotiate the mediation of troubled pasts in Europe.
Deliverables:
| Title | Month | |
| 1 | Report on the state of the art in the field of memory, conflict and media | 6 |
| 2 | A searchable database (per case study) of relevant sources and content | 12 |
| 3 | Report on the mediation of troubled pasts across all case studies | 21 |
Troubled Pasts in Arts and Culture
| Start Month | End Month |
| 4 | 18 |
Objectives:
- To understand how artistic and cultural artifacts react to a crisis related to troubled past in the selected case studies.
- To explore audience reactions (including critics and public debates) toward selected artworks aiming to disentangle
their potentially beneficial effects for a constructive debate about troubled pasts. - To analyse strategies and tools by artists and cultural workers for the benefit of expression of their own concerns,
problems, resistance or support toward troubled pasts.
Deliverables:
| Title | Month | |
| 1 | Database on collected data of artistic and cultural artifacts related to troubled pasts in the eight case studies | 8 |
| 2 | Report of the role of arts and culture in conflict instigation and resolution: a comparative analysis in the cases under study | 14 |
| 3 | Report on visual culture as an agent of social change: most pronounced cases | 18 |
| 4 | Policy brief on ‘Harnessing Arts for European Cultural Diplomacy: Expertise, Experience and Expectations’ | 18 |
Troubled Pasts in Political Discourses, Attitudes and Policies
| Start Month | End Month |
| 4 | 24 |
Objectives:
- To undertake an analysis of how the discourses of formal (e.g. political parties) and informal political actors (e.g.
civil society organisations) about specific ‘traumas’ or past conflicts have shaped public opinion in relation to the EU. - To identify and critically evaluate EU law and policy (external and internal) in relation to troubled pasts connected
to crises, conflicts or ‘traumas’.
Deliverables:
| Title | Month | |
| 1 | Typology of political discourses about the troubled past and their relationship to the EU | 7 |
| 2 | Representative survey analysis | 19 |
| 3 | Socio-legal analysis of EU transitional justice law and policy and recommendations for future EU policies on how to deal with traumatic pasts | 23 |
Dissemination, Innovation and Policy Recommendations
| Start Month | End Month |
| 2 | 36 |
Objectives:
- To disseminate the research outputs to journalists and stakeholders, integrating and engaging stakeholders in the
research process. - To provide tools for the academic community and civil society to re-explore their collective memory and troubled
past. - To equip professionals in cultural tourism with skills about how to deal with the interpretation of history in sites of
contested pasts. - To engage members of the public, visitors of sites of contested pasts, primary and secondary education students and teachers in playful, active and reflective learning about conflict-ridden historical pasts.
- To engage young people in contested pasts to develop competences for renegotiating troubled histories by considering
multiple perspectives through gaming. - To provide policy recommendations for facilitating processes of cultural dialogue and mutual understanding of the past for the eight countries of the study and the EU as an institution.
Deliverables:
| Title | Month | |
| 1 | Final Dissemination, Communication and Exploitation Plan | 2 |
| 2 | RePAST branding I: website, logo, identity guidelines | 2 |
| 3 | RePAST branding II: press kit, promotional video and social media presence | 5 |
| 4 | First report on stakeholder mapping and engagement through physical meetings | 8 |
| 5 | Second report on stakeholder mapping and engagement through physical meetings | 21 |
| 6 | Report on outcomes of the stakeholder engagement process (online hub and best practice manual) | 24 |
| 7 | Next Step Conference proceedings: Strategy document on ensuring the sustainability of the policy and practice community | 35 |
| 8 | RePAST Data Platform | 15 |
| 9 | Seminars for tourism professionals | 24 |
| 10 | Syllabi of developed university courses | 24 |
| 11 | Treasure-hunt game in tour-guide app | 26 |
| 12 | Report on the use of the treasure-hunt game by users (museums, users, students) | 33 |
| 13 | Game specification: A full specification of the games to be developed | 20 |
| 14 | Serious Games: A series of games fully deployed on existing channels | 26 |
| 15 | Report of game application in classroom, including its impact on student perceptions | 34 |
| 16 | Policy recommendations reports for each of the countries (8) and the EU in general (1) for addressing the troubled past(s) | 30 |
| 17 | Materials for international policy workshop (invitations, agendas) | 33 |
| 18 | First (preliminary) Policy Brief | 18 |
| 19 | Second Policy Brief | 36 |
Ethics requirements
| Start Month | End Month |
| 1 | 36 |
Objectives:
- To ensure compliance with the ‘ethics requirements’ set out in this work package.
Deliverables:
| Title | Month | |
| 1 | H – Requirement No. 1 | 5 |
| 2 | H – Requirement No. 2 | 5 |
| 3 | POPD – Requirement No. 5 | 5 |
| 4 | POPD – Requirement No. 6 | 5 |
| 5 | GEN – Requirement No. 8 | 3 |