Weapons, Wounds, Warfare – An Interdisciplinary Online Workshop Series, 2021, University of Auckland, New Zealand

If death and injury are central to warfare, so are the tools that cause bodily harm. This interdisciplinary workshop series, hosted by the University of Auckland’s ‘War in Context’ research hub across March-October 2021, explores the cultures of violence and control that form around military weaponry by focusing on the wounds they inflict and the (at least perceived) pain and suffering they provoke. It investigates the ways in which individuals, communities, states, and militaries imagine, represent, adapt, and receive military technologies in the context of their wounding capacity.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to postpone and then reimagine the more traditional conference on this theme we had initially planned for December 2020. We therefore invite proposals for panels or papers to be offered either in person (for New Zealand-based contributors), via live-stream, or pre-recorded as part of a series of events spread throughout 2021. Individual presentations should be 30 minutes in length, and those offered in person or live-streamed will be followed by a Q&A session of no more than 20 minutes in length. Panels should be approximately 40 minutes in length, with 20 mins for Q&A.

Papers should focus on particular weapons (or types of weapons), the context in which they are used, and the ‘wounds’ they cause. We welcome papers from any historical period, including today, and hope to attract scholars from a wide range of disciplines and cultural perspectives. As such, ‘wounds’ can, and indeed should, be interpreted in a broad way and can encompass not only physical, but psychological, social, cultural, and political damage.

It is planned that the workshop will form the core of a publication – either a peer-reviewed edited collection or special edition of an academic journal. All presenters will be encouraged to contribute to this publication. If you would like to offer a paper for the publication (but not present to the public) please let us know.

Proposals should include a title, an abstract (no more than 250 words), a brief presenter
biography (no more than 250 words) and your preferred mode of delivery (in person, livestream or pre-recorded). Please indicate when (in terms of dates: March-October) suits you best. We welcome proposals from scholars at all stages of their careers, including graduate students and early career scholars. Please send you proposals to the Series organizers at this email address: warincontext@auckland.ac.nz by 20 February 2021.

We have a small amount of funding available to bring New Zealand-based scholars to
Auckland to contribute in person.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us: Prof. Maartje Abbenhuis
(m.abbenhuis@auckland.ac.nz), Assoc. Prof. Jeremy Armstrong
(js.armstrong@auckland.ac.nz), and Dr Thomas Gregory (t.gregory@auckland.ac.nz)