Presented by: Jill Strauss, John Jay College of Criminal Justice CUNY
Presented at: 4th International Conference on Conflict Resolution Education
Date of Session: June 10, 2011

Session Description: In 2008, an intergenerational group of twelve Protestants and Catholics in Portadown, Northern Ireland collaborated on a conflict resolution, oral history and visual art project, revisiting the violent conflict known as the Troubles. During the project, everyone participated in conflict resolution workshops. The older generation reflected on their experiences of violence and the younger generation explored ways of interpreting the elders’ memories and feelings in visual form. This workshop will share the results of doctoral fieldwork on the development of empathy and humanizing the other, the roles of generational bias, memory, and the role of the arts and oral history in facilitating reconciliation in a post-violent-conflict society.