Legacies of War

Talk by Kathrin Bachleitner, senior scientist at the University of Salzburg, Austria.

Abstract

The talk discusses the role and function that legacies of war and displacement play in global politics and within the discipline of International Relations (IR). Under the legacies of war, it understands the traumatic collective experience of wars and their present political interpretations. It looks at how these interpretations on the state-, individual, and transnational levels affect international relations. Finally, the paper points out potential links for IR between the legacies of war and peace.

Bio

Kathrin Bachleitner is a senior scientist who focuses on EU and international relations at the University of Salzburg, Austria. Her research focuses on how the legacies of war and their contemporary interpretations shape political communities, normative perceptions, and choices in international matters. Conceptually, she deals primarily with collective identities, memory and the experience of trauma. She has published her research results on this topic in the book "Collective Memory in International Relations" (Oxford University Press 2021). She is also the author of numerous specialist articles in leading international journals, such as International Security, Review of International Studies, Cooperation and Conflict, and Foreign Policy Analysis, as well as editor of a special issue on the consequences of the war in Syria in Nations and Nationalism.