WARFUN Podcast: Recent Episodes
WARFUN
Welcome to the WARFUN Podcast. WARFUN is a research project funded by the European Research Council and led by Antonio De Lauri at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway. The project investigates the plurality of experiences, the emotional implications, and the narratives of war from the perspective of those who fight.
Through these conversations, the WARFUN podcast aims to offer a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be at war and how war blurs the boundaries between the extraordinary and the ordinary.
WARFUN is an ERC Consolidator Grant project (ID: 101001106).
In this episode, Iva Jelušić and Gal Kirn talk about the YugoslavPeople’s Liberation Struggle. Discussing the Partisan art created during thewar, especially on the territory of Slovenia, they consider how wartime artproduction supported the resistance to fascism and complemented it as well aswhat its values are relevant today and how it could remain relevant in thefuture.
Gal Kirn holds a PhD in Intercultural Studies of Ideasfrom the University of Nova Gorica (Slovenia). He is currently a researchassociate at the Faculty of Philosophy in Ljubljana (Slovenia) where he isresearching “Protests, artistic practices and the culture of remembrance in thepost-Yugoslav context” as well as participates in the work of the program groupabout the social contract in the 21st century. In his research, Gal has mostlybeen dealing with the context of socialist and post-socialist Slovenia and wasespecially interested in changes in the field of art, politics, and memory.
Iva Jelušić is a post-doctoral researcher for the “Warand Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the ChristianMichelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.
Link to the t-shirt Gal mentions during the conversation:https://etrgovina.ujp.gov.si/muzejnzssplet/sl-SI/Product/Product?id=rQnw8z4O9xzV2x7DxZi6LA--
In this episode, Heidi Mogstad and Thomas Randrup Pedersen discuss anthropologicalattitudes to research on the military and some of the ethical andmethodological complexities of studying and writing about soldiers and warfare.Pedersen shares experiences from his fieldwork with combat troops inAfghanistan and Iraq and reflects on his turn to existential anthropology.Mogstad and Pedersen also discuss some of their overlapping findings, includingsoldierly tropes of adventure, fun and post-war growth.
Thomas Randrup Pedersen Thomas is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the RoyalDanish Defence College.
Heidi Mogstad is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare andIts Experience” project at the Christian Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.
This episode first traces how public perceptions of soldiers have changed over time, including the recent reappraisal of the status of the armed forces in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The episode also sheds light on how soldiers experience civil-military relations. Against this background, the conversation revolves around German society’s relation to war. The conversation then digs into ostensibly contrasting realms of soldier experience. It addresses mechanisms to deal with fighting and killing and reveals the unexpected omnipresence of humor in soldier life.
Maren Tomforde is an anthropologist and the Head of Global International Relations at the German Armed Forces Command and Staff College. Maren is also a Professor at Macquarie University in Sydney.
Eva Johais is a Post Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.
In this episode, Iva Jelušić and Petra Hamer talk about musicking in the besieged Sarajevo. The conversation covers many related aspects, from practical issues arising from the lack of electricity to the activities of musicians who stayed and those who fled as well as music-related activities of the soldiers. Petra talks about the omnipresence of music in the city and the reasons why it was completely expected.
Petra Hamer is an ethnologist and cultural anthropologist researching popular music and culture during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995). She holds a PhD from the University of Graz, where she was researching artistic units of Bosnian-Herzegovinian army, their production of popular patriotic music and the question of national identity construction. She is currently employed as a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC project “The roles of the agency of the dead in the lives of individuals in contemporary society.”
Iva Jelušić is a post-doctoral researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Christian Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.
Some of the songs mentioned in the conversation:
Dino Merlin: Vojnik sreće (Soldier of Luck) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qp5ZPm8-S8
Dino Merlin: Jedna si jedina (You Arethe One and Only) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RORiH6WWt9Q
Hanka Paldum: Žuta Fadila (Yellow Fadila) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wuiTMhb-xg&t=108s
Nazif Gljiva: Branioci Sarajeva (Defenders of Sarajevo) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9WOds3lXHA
Mladen Vojičić - Tifa: Ponesi zastavu Dragane Vikiću (Carry the Flag, Dragan Vikić) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeddbTjyYnQ
Macbeth: Mnoge će majke (Many Mothers Will) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8u-X_w95Wg
Ceca: Volim te (I Love You) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcg2sAKTkXM
In this episode, Iva Jelušić and Florian Bieber talk about the El Shatt refugee camp in Egypt that operated during the final two years of World War II. The conversation provides an overview of the functioning of this camp, the life of the people in it, and the aspects that made it a well-organized as well as a joyful establishment, which was different from other refugee camps.
You can see images from the camp in the WarFun visual archive.
Florian Bieber is a political scientist and historian working on inter-ethnic relations, ethnic conflict and nationalism, focusing on Southeastern Europe. He is a Professor in South-East European History and Politics and director of the Center for South East European Studies at the University of Graz. He coordinates the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group and is President of the Association for the Study of Nationalities. Florian has published widely, with his most recent books including Negotiating Unity and Diversity in the European Union (with Roland Bieber, 2021), as well as Debating Nationalism. Other published books include, The Global Spread of Nations and The Rise of Authoritarianism in the Western Balkans (both published in 2020). The book Hvar in the Modern Age: Identity and Change in Southeastern Europe, which is mentioned in the conversation, is expected to be published in 2024.
Iva Jelušić is a post-doctoral researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Christian Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.
In this episode, Iva Jelušić and Elissa Mailändertalk about Elissa's research of soldier amateur photography, particularly during the Second World War. The focus of their conversation is what can be discovered about soldiers and the ways they had fun through these seemingly banal tokens of war.
Elissa Mailänder is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at Sciences Po in Paris. She is an expert on violence, gender and sexuality; material culture; and the history of everyday life. In her research to date, she hasprimarily focused on 20th century Germany and Austria.
Iva Jelušić is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.
In this episode, Iva Jelušić and Emma Hanna talk about wartime entertainment and recreation in the British Armed Forces during the First World War. The focus of the conversation is on the relevance of musical activities to rank-and-file soldiers and their impact on soldiers’ morale and well-being.
Emma Hanna is a lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Kent in Great Britain. On related topics she has published several articles and book chapters as well as two monographs, The Great War on the Small Screen: Representing the First World War in Contemporary Britain in 2009 and Sounds of War, Music in the British Armed Forces during the Great War in 2020.
Iva Jelušić is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Christian Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.
Read more about the cover image for Emma's book, Sounds of War, and why she chose it in the WarFun visual archive.
In this episode, Blasco Sciarrino presents the Italian elite army corps known as the Daring Ones (Arditi), which fought mainly in the First World War. Hediscusses how having fun increased their fighting power in the course of war and their subsequent paramilitary activism, and considers if the playfulnessand collective pursuits increased not just the Daring Ones’ military prowess, but also several of these men’s resolve to use violence.
Blasco Sciarrino is a history teaching fellow and researcher. He received his PhD in 2022, on the political activism of Italian and Romanian Great War veterans in the period between 1918 and 1945, from the Central European University in Budapest/Vienna (CEU). His research interests include veteran politics, fascism, nation-building cultural policies, politics of memory and cultural/ideological transfers.
The illustrations that are mentioned in this episode can be found in the WarFun visual archive.
In this episode, Iva Jelušić and Jana Dolečki discuss theatre in the context of the disintegration of socialist Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Wars. The conversation focuses on the theatrical performances of the so-called frontline theaters and in the theaters outside war zones (in Zagreb and Belgrade). In the second part of the conversation, they consider some more general claims about theatre and its merits in the times of war.
Jana Dolečki is a theatrologist, journalist and a conductor of two choirs in Vienna.
Iva Jelušić is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Christian Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.
In this episode, Iva Jelušić and Sven Milekić talk about the activities of Croatian veterans of the 1990s conflict active in veterans’ associations. The conversation focuses on the veterans' strategies of self-presentation to the public and instances where the observer can glimpse pleasure despite their emphasis on severity and sacrifice.
Sven Milekić is a Doctoral candidate enrolled in the PhD programme at the Department of History at Maynooth University as recipient of the Irish Research Council’s Andrew Grene Post-Conflict Reconciliation Scholarship.
Iva Jelušić is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Christian Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.
In this episode, Heidi Mogstad talks to Jethro Norman about his ethnographic research with European veterans working and living as private military and security contractors in East Africa. Jethro argues for the importance of taking seriously the voices and experiences of veterans and ‘mercenaries’, including their attachments to and critiques of their own societies, the military, and national and colonial history. He also unsettles conventional ideas and stereotypes about contractors, war, and international green zones. Finally, Heidi challenges Jethro to reflect on the pleasures and discomfort he experienced during his novel and volatile fieldwork.
Jethro Norman is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. His current research project explores the political and humanitarian impact of Somali diaspora groups, from the perspective of communities within Somalia. He is also writing a book based on his PhD, which was an ethnographic study of former European soldiers working and living in East Africa as private military and security contractors.
Heidi Mogstad is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Christian Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.
In this episode, Iva Jelušić and Meredith Lair talk about the life of the US soldiers in army bases during the Vietnam War. The conversation first focuses on some of the findings from Lair’s book Armed with Abundance: Consumerism and Soldiering in the Vietnam War (2011), which examines the non-combat experiences of American soldiers in Vietnam. The second part of the conversation brings to the fore her current research, including soldier photography during the same war.
Meredith Lair is an Associate Professor of History at George Mason University, where she directs the interdisciplinary studies graduate program, and is an expert on the Vietnam War.
Iva Jelušić is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Christian Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.
In this episode, Eva Johais and Catherine Lutz discuss whether we can and should study fun in the context of war. This means dealing with moral and conceptual questions of conducting research on war. Why does Catherine Lutz call for “decentering the battlefield”? How can our own moralities inhibit our understanding of war as a central phenomenon in the contemporary world? And what forms of pleasure do people feel when they go to war?
During this conversation, the concept of war is also linked to the idea of spectacle, which reveals how war resembles other forms of human experience like sports and how we all participate in war.
Catherine Lutz is Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Family Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Currently, she co-directs the “Costs of War” project at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
Eva Johais is a Post Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.