Conference

Narratives of Trauma: Victims, experiences and processes

June 19 and 20, 2014

Auditorium, Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra


This conference will be an opportunity to present  the main results of the research project "Vítimas, Trauma e Processos Institucionais:  Para Além de uma Ética da Vítima",  and  discuss those results with partner associations and project  consultants.

The main objective of the project is to analyze which societal changes has occurred so that the discourses about victims and their support dispositives became legitimated ways of accessing the public sphere and for victims’ rights claiming and acquisition.

The analysis implies a genealogy of concepts such as victim, trauma, post-traumatic stress and their progressive institutionalisation in reference manuals, intervention methodologies, national and international agencies, victims’ support associations, documents, etc. In sum, it proposes a genealogy of the intellectual, political, and moral consolidation of the trauma paradigm.

Empirically, the project will study victims’ associations in two European countries: Portugal and France. In Portugal, the associations to be included are the Portuguese Association of Victim Support; the Association of Victims’ Families of the Entre-os-Rios Tragedy; and the Handicapped of the Armed Forces Association. In France: the National Federation of Collective Accidents Victims (Fédération Nationale des Victimes d'Accidents Collectifs), the Comité de Défense des Victimes d' AZF, Association de Familles Endeuillées AZF Toulouse, Association AF447 Entraide et Solidarité,  anda Union Fédérale des Associations Françaises d' Anciens Combattants, Victimes de Guerre et des Jeunesses de l'Union Fédéralof the War Wounded. Complementarily, there will be a thorough analysis of the ways persons manage their victim’ condition beyond conventional dispositives and associations of victims’ support

Free admission with registration