Workshop: Interrogation in War and Conflict, Reading, 29 November 2011

This looks very very interesting: may be of particular interest to MA students planning to take the Translating History unit next year.

INTERROGATION IN WAR AND CONFLICT: BETWEEN LIBERTY, SECURITY AND JUSTICE
A Workshop supported by the Leverhulme Major Research Programme 'The Liberal Way of War'

Professor Hilary Footitt and Dr Simona Tobia, will be holding a one-day workshop on Tuesday, 29
November 2011, at the University of Reading. The event is free but registration is obligatory. There is more information here.

Programme:

09.00 - Coffee
09.15 – Welcome – Alan Cromartie
09.30 – 11.10 Military interrogation: the questioning of enemies
Chair: Heather Jones, LSE
• Keynote: David Burrill, Former Deputy Director Intelligence Corps, and Chief of Staff
Intelligence and Security Centre of the UK Armed Forces.
‘British and American Military Interrogation from 1939 to 1983 - Lessons at Risk’
• Franziska Heimburger, EHESS, Paris
‘Carrot or stick - French interpreters treading a fine line in obtaining information from German prisoners of war during the First World War’
• Huw Bennett, King’s College
‘British interrogations during the Mau Mau Emergency, 1952-56’
11.10 – 11.30 Coffee break
11.30 – 13.00 Forensic interrogation and international justice
Chair: Nigel Rodley, Univeristy of Essex
• Alice Zago, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court
‘Modalities of Questioning Witnesses and Victims at the International Criminal Court’
• Louise Askew, University of Nottingham
‘A perceived neutrality: an English woman's experience of interpreting during suspect interviews at the ICTY’
• Matt Pollard, University of Essex
‘Coercive interrogation in the jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals’
13.00 – 14.00 Lunch break
14.00 – 16.10 ‘HumInt’: interrogation, intelligence and security
Chair: Philip Murphy, Institute of Commonwealth Studies
• Keynote: Christopher Andrew, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge
‘Interrogating spies and debriefing defectors. Some conclusions based on my research as official historian of MI5 and unofficial historian of the KGB’
• Simona Tobia, University of Reading
‘The British way to Humint in the Second World War: the case of CSDIC’
• Tomas Bouska, Charles University Prague, Political Prisoners Project
‘Czechoslovak Show Trials. Interrogation of former Political Prisoners between 1948-1953’.
• Kristyna Buskova, University of Nottingham, Political Prisoners Project
‘Life-long psychological consequences of Stalinist interrogation for the Czechoslovak ex-political prisoners from the 1950s’

Languages at War final conference, 7-9 April 2011 (registration deadline 18 February)

Students taking the Translating History unit may be particularly interested in this conference. The deadline for registration and payment has been extended to 18 February 2011.

The Conference's Provisional Programme and List of Abstracts are now available on line at:

http://www.reading.ac.uk/languages-at-war/lw-conference2011.aspx

A Special Event will be held at the Cabinet War Rooms at 7.30 pm on Friday 8th April 2011, including a guided tour of the Churchill Museum and underground Cabinet War Rooms as well as dinner at one of the historic war time rooms. The deadline for registration and payment for this special event is 18th February 2011, and you will be able to register for both conference and special event by using the same form.

Languages at War conference, 2011

International Conference, Imperial War Museum, London.
7-9 April 2011
Languages at War: policies and practices of language contacts in conflict

This interdisciplinary conference, supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, will bring together current research on the role of languages in war, conflict and peacemaking situations, focusing on such questions as:

- What are the foreign language policies of government, military and multilateral agencies in conflict situations?
- What are the language-related experiences of those involved ‘on the ground’ in these conflicts?
- What are the implications for language intermediaries who work in conflict zones?

Invited speakers include Professor Joanna Bourke (Birkbeck), and Professor Mona Baker (Manchester), and there will be contributions from employing agencies and from practitioners. Papers are invited (from historians, war studies specialists, cultural studies scholars, translation/interpreting specialists) for Panel sessions on ‘Meeting the other in war and conflict’ and ‘Interpreting /Translating in war and conflict’. We are particularly keen to have contributions from early career researchers, as well as from more experienced researchers and practitioners.

Paper proposals should provide a) name/institutional affiliation; b) 200 word abstract of proposed paper, c) brief statement of research interest.

Proposals should be sent to Professor Hilary Footitt at the University of Reading (h.a.foot at reading.ac.uk) by 30th September 2010.

Languages At War seminar, Imperial War Museum, London, 28 May 2010

For those of you in the London area. It would probably be of interest to students taking the 'Translating History' unit in the summer - there's a block on translation, interpreting and conflict in that unit. As far as I can see the event is free but booking is required; see here for details.

Languages at War
MEETING THE ‘OTHER’ IN WAR: Two case studies
28 May 2010
Conference Room, Imperial War Museum, London

10.00: Welcome and coffee

James Taylor (Imperial War Museum); Prof Hilary Footitt (University of Reading)

10.30–11.30: Keynote paper

Prof Joanna Bourke (Birkbeck College): Does the enemy have a face?: combat narratives, speech acts and faciality, 1914–1975

11.30–11.45: Coffee

11.45–1.15: Case study 1: Western Europe 1944–47

Prof Hilary Footitt (University of Reading): Geographies of co-existence: fraternization revisited

Dr Simona Tobia (University of Reading): Interrogations: transnational encounters during and after the war

Discussants: Prof Anita Prażmowska (LSE); Dr Dan Todman (Queen Mary, University of London)

1.15–1.45: Lunch

1.45–3.15: Case study 2: Bosnia-Herzegovina 1995–2000

Prof Mike Kelly (University of Southampton): Kicking the jeep: how a little language goes a long way

Dr Catherine Baker (University of Southampton): Prosperity without security: locally employed interpreters in the Bosnian economy

Discussants: Dr Vanessa Pupavac (University of Nottingham); Dr Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers (Roehampton University)

3.15–4.00: Museums and war

James Taylor (Imperial War Museum): Saying the unsayable: challenging history at the Imperial War Museum

Discussant: Samantha Cairns (Museums, Libraries and Archives London)

4.00–4.15: Coffee

4.15–4.45: Closing remarks

Nick Stansfield (Freelance international contractor): Language encounters on the ground

Fraternizing/non-fraternizing with the enemy?

Seminar in Manchester next Monday. Anyone taking the unit 'Translating History' this summer and within reach of Manchester should find this seminar very interesting.

The seminar will take place at 2 p.m. on Monday 1 March in room A101, Samuel Alexander Building, the University of Manchester.

Fraternizing/non-fraternizing with the enemy? Uncovering the place of foreign languages in conflict.
Hilary Footit, University of Reading

This research starts from the observation that foreign languages are absent from the accounts of war traditionally produced by International Relations scholars, war studies specialists, and social and cultural historians of conflict. The project on which the paper is based (Languages at war: policies and practices of language contacts in conflict) aims to make the place of foreign languages more visible in war, and to argue that they are an integral part of the political economy of war and conflict.
This paper will raise some of the issues associated with the enterprise of making languages visible in conflict situations by looking at three specific cases – intelligence, preparing military personnel for operations in foreign countries, and encounters between soldiers and civilians ‘on the ground’ in conflict. Each of these, in the context of the Second World War, the paper will argue, poses different research problems related to sources and interpretative frameworks:
- a case in which language- related sources (both written and oral) exist in abundance, but have not thus far been explored
- a case in which foreign languages are not specifically named but are embedded in policy preparations
- and finally, a case in which foreign languages are a vital but unexplored part of the ‘on the ground’ meeting between armies and civilians.

Hilary Footitt is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Languages and European Studies at the University of Reading. She has written widely on discourses of women in politics (Women, Europe and the New Languages of Politics, Continuum, 2002), and on the army/civilian encounter in World War Two (War and Liberation in France. Living with the Liberators, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). She is currently Principal Investigator for the AHRC sponsored project Languages at War: policies and practices of language contacts in conflict (www.reading.ac.uk/languages-at-war/), led by the University of Reading, with the University of Southampton, and the Imperial War Museum, London.

Languages at War events

I have just seen the latest issue of the 'Languages at War' project newsletter. The project involves a series of conference presentations, seminars and workshops around the UK and abroad: see here for more details. These events might be particularly interesting for students taking the summer DL 'Translating History' unit.