Four Yezidi women in northern Iraq spent 2022 using photography to give voice to their everyday experiences of embodying peace, (in)security and struggle as their community rebuilt itself after years of war and displacement.
Embodying Peace, Navigating Violence: A network of auto-ethnographers in Iraq and Palestine was an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project, jointly run by Dr Sofya Shahab and Dr Chloe Skinner from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in 2022-2023. Rethinking Security acted as dissemination partners for this project, aiming to bring the research findings and methodology to a policy and practitioner audience.
The aim was that methods that look at the intricacies of peace, (in)security and safety can be made replicable in a wider setting, drawing on the lessons learned about how exploring bodily reactions to (in)security and conflict can act as a helpful way to build a true sense of peace for women.
In March 2023 we organised a roundtable discussion in London to share the findings and methodologies of the project with practitioners and researchers on women, peace and security issues. We have also published two articles on our Blog by the researchers at IDS and in Iraq, as well as an online exhibition of photos taken and described by the citizen researchers in northern Iraq using the PhotoVoice methodology.