Ivana Maček is since January 2014 Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. Her latest book “Engaging Violence Trauma, Memory and Representation” (ed. Ivana Maček, Routledge, 2014) is the result of an international and interdisciplinary symposium that Ivana and her former colleagues at the Hugo Valentin Centre organized in 2012.
The Hugo Valentin Centre conducts research and education on the Holocaust and genocide. Ivana and her colleagues discovered that they had all been badly affected by their work. They began to exchange experiences and formed the network TRAST for anyone working with material about difficult experiences of massive political violence. The book is the result of the symposium.
“Engaging Violence Trauma, memory and representation” contains chapters from a variety of disciplines including anthropology, clinical psychology, history, history of ideas, religious studies, social psychology, and sociology. The book examines how scholars, students, and professionals engaged with violence deal with the inevitable emotional stress and trauma they experience. Each chapter draws on personal histories, and many authors suggest new theoretical and methodological concepts to investigate emotional reactions to this material.