In this episode of the Visualising War and Peace podcast, guest-host Zofia Guertin speaks with Dr. Alice König about her work expanding the Visualising War project to include peace studies. In this conversation, Alice unveils the groundbreaking Ancient Peace Studies Network—the first of its kind dedicated to examining how peace was understood, experienced, and represented across different ancient cultures.

Discover why peace narratives have received far less scholarly attention than war stories, and how Dr. König's team is working to change that by investigating whose voices and experiences are reflected in ancient accounts of peace and reconciliation.

What can ancient approaches to conflict resolution teach us about modern peacebuilding? In this thought-provoking special episode, we explore how elite-centered peace narratives shaped societal attitudes in antiquity and continue to influence our understanding of peace today. Dr. König reveals how her interdisciplinary network is "reading against the grain" of ancient sources to uncover ordinary people's lived experiences of peace—voices that have been historically marginalized but might offer valuable insights for contemporary peace literacy.

Don't miss our conversation about bridging academic research with creative outreach, as Dr. König shares details about the network's collaboration with a professional theater company, NMT Automatics, and the upcoming multi-authored publication, "New Visions of Ancient Peace." This episode offers a perfect blend of historical scholarship and practical application, demonstrating how ancient wisdom might help us visualize and build more effective paths to peace in our modern world.

We hope you enjoy the episode.

For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please visit the University of St Andrews' Visualising War website and the Visualising Peace Project.

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin

In this episode, Zofia Guertin interviews Alice König about her recent research on ancient habits of visualising war and peace.

Alice has recently co-edited a new book with Nicolas Wiater, on ancient conflict narratives, called Visualising War across the Ancient Mediterranean: Interplay between Conflict Narratives in Different Genres and Media (Routledge 2025). In this podcast episode, Alice introduces the book and discusses some of the themes at the heart of it.

In particular, she explores the conception of visualisation: the ways in which narratives of war not only reflect or depict conflict but also envision it, in ways that shape how conflict gets pursued or prevented in the real world. She also discusses the role that interplay between narratives and discourses can play in cementing and amplifying influential war imaginaries. And she considers the impacts which all of this war-storytelling has on ordinary lives in the everyday.

In the process, Alice reflects on connections between ancient habits of visualising and narrating war and modern discourses and behaviours. Among other topics, she wonders why narratives of peril and danger seem more attractive than narratives of peace; what consequences might flow from ancient tendencies to euphemise or romanticise violence towards women; and what force military metaphors have in civilian contexts, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. The episode ranges back and forth between antiquity and modernity, as Alice discusses militarism(s), the narrative role of children in war storytelling, the complex relationship between discourses of war, knowledge and power, and many other such topics.

We hope you enjoy the episode. For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please visit the University of St Andrews' Visualising War website and the Visualising Peace Project.

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin

In this episode, Alice interviews Professor Marsha Henry, the Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton Chair in Women, Peace, Security and Justice at the Mitchell Institute, at Queen’s University Belfast. Over the course of an impressive career, Marsha’s research has focused particularly on the complex relationships between gender, militarisation and peacekeeping. As well as writing a wealth of articles and chapters on these topics, she has spent time over the past 20 years documenting the social experiences of people living and working in peacekeeping missions. Her book on this ethnographic-inspired research, The End of Peacekeeping: Gender, Race, and the Martial Politics of Intervention, was published in March 2024 by University of Pennsylvania Press.

The episode starts with Marsha discussing militarism (the ideology that armed conflict is acceptable, normal, even impressive, noble, desirable - and of greater value in society than many civilian activities) and militarisation (the process by which individuals and groups, civilians as well as soldiers, are socialised into war-oriented worldviews). As she underlines, militarisation often intersects with discourses of gender (that reflect and generate inequalities between men and women) and also with discourses of race and colonisation (again leading to inequalities and oppression). While it is less studied, the same trend can be observed in contexts of peacekeeping, where ideas of gender and race can similarly result in unequal and harmful experiences. This has led Marsha to adopting 'intersectional feminist methodologies' in her study of both militarisation and peacekeeping - an approach she explains in detail.

The bulk of the episode focuses on Marsha's study of current systems of peacekeeping, in particular the harms perpetrated in official peacekeeping missions via e.g. gender-based violence, colonising impulses, and global north thinking. In her book The End of Peacekeeping, Marsha argues that peacekeeping is not simply a practical but also ‘an epistemic project that actively produces knowledge about peacekeeping, peoples, and practices and as such maintains global systems of power and inequality including heterosexism, colonialism, racism, and militarism’. For that reason, she advocates for its abolition - a proposal we discuss in depth.

In exploring alternatives to current peacekeeping practices, Marsha underlines the need for 'knowing differently' by examining peacekeeping more systematically from the perspectives of 'the peacekept'. We discuss the power of different peace imaginaries to shift habits of thinking and doing, and the need to visualise peacekeeping broadly, as encompassing e.g. environmental work. Despite advocating for an end to peacekeeping, Marsha concludes the episode by looking ahead to positive futures - achievable if we are able to dismantle gendered, racist and colonising approaches that for too long have resulted in peacekeeping itself becoming a mechanism of direct, cultural and structural.

We hope you enjoy the episode. For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please visit the University of St Andrews' Visualising War website and the Visualising Peace Project.

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin