Even though the exams are over, we had to prepare for our Bosnia Symposium in which the PCS students presented our field research findings from our Bosnia trip in March to the university professors and students. This event gave us an opportunity to do what many of our professors and PhD candidates get to do an a semi-regular basis and followed a similar format to the CPCS Research Frontiers last month. I have every intention of putting this event on my CV or cover letter for certain jobs and PhD applications. Each of the five panels gave a fifteen minute presentation about their general findings from the organizations they interviewed, and then the audience could ask the panel questions for fifteen minutes. A couple professors tried to ask difficult questions, but we had not difficulty answering the questions.
My panel was on 'culture,' and we talked about how culture could contribute to peacebuilding. I co-presented with Damien (for those of you who know this blog well, he was the one who talked about growing a beard at the end of this video), and we both spoke for about 10 minutes. He talked about how a football initiative where Bosniac, Croat, and Serb kids could meet and play so that they could learn that the stereotypes they learned in their communities were wrong. The relationships from these events could build a more stable peace. My presentation talked about two arts initiatives, including a French NGO that sponsors film festivals, photography exhibitions, book showcases, and other cultural events. This same NGO also teaches Bosnians how to translate Bosnian books into French so that these works can be published in France. My overall point was that these cultural events offer an opportunity for citizens to construct a new identity not based upon ethnic identity, which would be more similar to the Yugoslav identity that had promoted peace for many decades before the USSR collapsed. However, citizens can often choose to support the cultural activities for their own ethnic group instead of mingling with others. In the end, the Bosnians have to construct their own society.
The media and politics panel
The education panel
The human rights panel
The PCS class
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