| 1. |
- Wessels, Josepha, Associate Professor, 1973-
(författare)
-
A sense of presence : empathic ethnographic encounter and participatory 360-video with Syrians in Jordan
- 2022
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Over the past 5 years, immersive media technologies continue to provide new and challenging opportunities for participatory approaches in social sciences. In particular the use of small 360-video cameras for visual ethnographic work provides new innovative research methods for migration research and participatory action research (PAR). This paper describes and analyses the preliminary results of a 6-year research programme entitled 'Refugee Migration and Cities: Social Institutions, Political Governance and Integration in Jordan, Turkey and Sweden', led by Gothenburg University in collaboration with Malmö University, Sweden and Bogazici University in Turkey. How does immersive 360-video enhance the ability to understand the Other? This paper aims to give insight into ongoing longterm research on attitudes towards refugees of war, in which participatory 360-video is used as a methodology for ethnographic enquiry with Syrians in Sweden, Turkey and Jordan. The programme implemented a methodology based on the use of immersive 360-video technology for a visual multi-sited ethnographic study on refugee lifeworlds, encounters and conviviality, conducted in three different geographical locations with Syrian refugees. The study makes use of 360-video cameras to capture and document everyday life from the point of view of Syrian refugees in respectively Gothenburg, Sweden, Adana, Turkey and Irbid, Jordan. Providing preliminary conclusions, the author will reflect on building rapport with refugees in the field and various levels of agency and authorship of the research participants.
|
|
| 2. |
|
|
| 3. |
- Wessels, Josepha, Associate Professor, 1973-
(Filmfotograf, creator_code:cre_t)
-
A Visit to Sällbo : JPI Urban Europe Housing and Integration study visit - 8 June 2022
- 2022
-
Konstnärligt arbete (film/video)abstract
- Research film of the visit to Sällbo, in Helsingborg, within the framework of The Housing-Integration-Nexus: shaping exchange and innovation for migrants’ access to housing and social inclusion - HOUSE-IN project funded by the Formas –Research Council for Sustainable Development JPI Urban Europe European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
|
|
| 4. |
- Wessels, Josepha, Associate Professor, 1973-
(författare)
-
Families in Flux : a longitudinal study of life histories, communitas and dispersal based on multi-sited and digital ethnography with Syrians conducted over two decades
- 2022
-
Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper traces migration histories of an extended patronymic Syrian family group and explores how these experiences over time define and structure the daily lives of Syrians and their transnational family bonds. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Syria, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands and a unique archive of ethnographic film extending 21 years (1999-2020), The paper discusses trajectories of migration and an anthropology of events based on interviews with respondents between the ages of 17 and 48 of both genders, from three extended families from Aleppo and Raqqa province (northern Syria), with whom I have built and developed rapport since my long-term visual ethnographic fieldwork between 1999 and 2002 in their original village in northern Syria. The study demonstrates how temporality and processes of migration and displacement, transformed marriage conditions and customs between extended family members across generations and geography. This study considers how communitas is maintained and affected by the violence of war, and different trajectories of younger generations in the Netherlands and Germany and their friendships with family members of the same age and the same extended family group, still living in northern Syria. The paper analyzes how distant memories of a nostalgic place, important for a study on mobility, migration and Syrian refugees, have become a bonding force to connect the “we” from which the world is perceived, to construct the communitas.
|
|
| 5. |
- Wessels, Josepha, Associate Professor, 1973-
(författare)
-
Graffiti and Mural Arts for Visions of Sustainable Futures in Sudan
- 2022
-
Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In 2019, the Sudanese people managed to bring down an authoritarian regime that ruled the country for over 3 decades. Their visions for change in Sudan can be seen and observed in the large body and collections of graffiti art and mural paintings throughout the public space in the city of Khartoum. Some of these murals give a clear image of how the revolutionaries see and envision the Sudan they want to build (‘Hanabniho’ = ‘we will build’). The term ‘Hanabniho’ derives from a poem written by Mahjoub Sharif and sung by legendary Nubian Sudanese singer Mohammed Wardi; ‘We will build Sudan, how we dreamt it every day, homeland of goodness, homeland of democracy’ It was sung during the 2019 Sudanese Revolution. The creative and imaginary capacities of Sudanese young revolutionaries to imagine Sudan’s future, are the basis for a research project that explores collaborative storytelling and future making through bringing together Sudanese graffiti artist collectives and environmental activists for future visioning exercises to imagine a sustainable future for Sudan. Since January 2020, the author has documented the Sudanese revolutionary graffiti and murals using ArcGIS story mapping in which locations of important mural are geolocated and presented interactively to document and explore important relations between places, spaces and stories. In February 2022, the author conducted ethnographic fieldwork with environmentalists and mural artists in Khartoum. In this paper, she will present preliminary results of the study and participatory future workshopping as a method that she applied during the fieldwork. The goal of the future workshop was to creatively explore how Sudanese graffiti artists and environmentalists can co-create sustainable future visions for Sudan. Both groups exchanged knowledge, discussed SDGs, sketched together and collaborated in telling their stories for earthly survival and human rights with the walls as canvas.
|
|
| 6. |
|
|
| 7. |
|
|
| 8. |
- Wessels, Josepha, Associate Professor, 1973-
(författare)
-
Killing the dispensables : massacres perpetrated in the villages of Eastern Aleppo Province in 2013
- 2022
-
Ingår i: British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. - : Routledge. - 1353-0194 .- 1469-3542. ; 49:3, s. 463-485
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In 2013, Aleppo province was engulfed in violence. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and affiliated Shi'a militias executed a campaign of massacres in the rural areas located on the eastern fringes of the province. The violence caused an exodus from this region, eventually dissipating local rural communities entirely. What can explain such extreme and brutal political violence perpetrated at a local level in the east Aleppo countryside throughout 2013? To find an answer, I analyse the personal accounts of those who witnessed the violence and YouTube videos. Taken together, these sources provide a visceral description of the massacres-in particular the summary executions in the village of Rasm al-Nafl, as a case study of extreme violence in one of the poorest rural areas of Syria. Problematizing mono-causal sectarian explanations, I argue that a deeper non-sectarian complex of rurality and a process of subaltern othering in combination with opportunism, governmental retribution, and strategic military concern for territorial control in order to secure alternative supply routes to Aleppo, ultimately led to the eradication of life and cultural genocide in these rural areas.
|
|
| 9. |
- Wessels, Josepha, Associate Professor, 1973-
(författare)
-
Messianic “Masquerades of War” in the Middle-East
- 2012
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Messianic “Masquerades of War” and foreign interventions in the Middle East. Fox news reports that a commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard admitted that Tehran is fighting both a…
|
|
| 10. |
- Wessels, Josepha, Associate Professor, 1973-
(författare)
-
Multimodal data collection to document graffiti of the 2019 Sudanese Revolution
- 2022
-
Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study aims to document and capture past and future visions of Sudan’s revolutionary youth. The 2019 Sudanese revolution ousted dictator Omar el-Bashir after decades of authoritarian rule. In the words of its own revolutionaries, this is thanks to a vibrant artistic public sphere on the streets and its connection to online digital dissidence. The Sudanese revolution caused an explosion of vibrant urban art made by street artists who expressed their thoughts and voices through mural paintings and graffiti. In 2020 and 2022, I conducted fieldwork in Khartoum with the Sudanese revolutionary artists. My study focuses on the role of mural art and graffiti in the Sudanese protests, through digital ethnography, extensive digital photo documentation of revolutionary graffiti street art and photo elicitation interviews with Sudanese revolutionary artists, both on zoom and irl, in combination with organizing a collaborative visioning workshop. My geolocated photographic data are combined with regular and VR360 video data, embedded in a georeferenced ARcGIS storymap that enables everyone to digitally conduct an immersive tour through Khartoum city and virtually visit the sites of important political graffiti. My challenge is how to analyse and interpret the multimodal data to capture the visual cultures surrounding the Sudanese revolution.
|
|
