In this episode, Alice interviews Lauren Benton, Professor of History and Law at Yale University. Prof Benton specialises in global legal history and the history of European empires. She has a raft of publications to her name, on the intersection between the British empire and the origins of international law, on piracy and protectionism, and on slavery and colonisation, among other topics.

Her work in this space has involved researching many forms of violence that fall short of full-blown war, and this has culminated in her most recent book, published in 2024 by Princeton University Press, titled They Called it Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence. Covering 500 years of history, from 1400-1900, it shines a spotlight on the many forms of violence (from raiding and enslaving to small wars and sudden massacres, all hallmarks of European imperialism) that regularly took place during times of so-called peace – calling into question how we categorise and define both peace and war.

In the podcast we dig into the book's findings, as Lauren outlines her interest in writing a different kind of global history which incorporates different cultures and perspectives and which looks beyond 'great battles' and the classic war stories we are all used to reading.

She helps us grapple with the whole spectrum of what she calls 'violence at the threshold of war and peace', noting that so-called 'small' wars have never had small impacts on the people involved. We discuss truces and their potential to drive, not just end, conflict; and Lauren outlines the violence inherent in many peace-keeping responses and 'protection emergencies', which securitise, other and control people, especially in the context of imperial power.

Lauren draws attention to the role that domestic households have long played in the 'constant drumbeat' of recurring violence that accompanies imperialism, and also to the intersection of 'regimes of armed peace' and racism. We discuss ancient and modern examples, reflecting on how blurred the boundary between war and peace often is. And we discuss what is at stake in exactly how we categorise and name different forms of violence, as e.g. full-blown war, insurgency, a 'special operation', or peacekeeping.

Lauren underlines the extent to which we continue to anticipate and accept ‘small wars’ as ‘a structural, even expected, condition of interpolity relations’; and she notes the tragic irony of our assumption that it is only by conducting this kind of supposedly ‘protective’ violence that we might achieve future peace.

We hope you enjoy this fascinating conversation about recurring patterns of conflict that history often overlooks. 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 Dr Beryl Pong, an expert on 20th-century and contemporary war. Beryl is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Future of Intelligence. An affiliated lecturer in the Faculty of English, her research is very interdisciplinary, combining literary and historical studies with visual politics and an interest in emerging technologies. Her first book, British Literature and Culture in Second World Wartime: for the Duration (published in 2020 by Oxford University Press) brings together her research on wartime literature, film and art and looks specifically at how people articulated and navigated temporal anxieties in the context of WWII. Beryl's interest in space and time, and in literary, sound and visual cultures, is also key to her current research on drone warfare. In 2024 she co-edited a book on Drone Aesthetics: War, Culture, Ecology; and she leads the Centre for Drones and Culture at Cambridge, which explores how drones are impacting the way we see and relate to our world.

The episode starts by diving into some WWII literature to explore the concept of chronophobia: a dread of both past and future, coloured by the in-between-ness of a long period of conflict that followed on from the First World War and led into the Cold War. As Beryl explains, anxieties about past and future are common to many wartime experiences, but they take on some specific resonances during WWII. Along the way, we also explore 'micro temporalities' during wartime, such as the anxiety that builds during a day about what night-time air raids might bring.

We move from discussing 20th-century 'war in the skies' to discussion of the impact that drone technologies are having on how we visualise war itself, as well as how people in conflict zones get viewed. As Beryl underlines, drones promote habits of viewing that are often top-down, imperial and securitising, with a host of real-world consequences for different people on the ground. We discuss the importance of countering this with more bottom-up ways of looking at contemporary wartime experiences, and this leads to some conversation about the roles that art can play in showing us war from new perspectives. This podcast connects to conversations in previous episodes with Julian Wright, Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox and Paul Lushenko and Jerilyn Packer. We hope you enjoy the discussion.

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 of the Visualising War and Peace podcast, guest-host Zofia Guertin speaks with Prof. 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 Prof. 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. Prof. 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 Prof. 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