On 20 November 2024 we had the first Annual Lova Network Meeting as a follow up of the annual Lova Study Day. We started with a General Assembly. Dr. Sonja Marzi, assistant professor at Radboud University, held a keynote lecture on her research with displaced women in two Colombian cities. After the break, discussant dr. Sanne Weber, assistant professor at the same university, shared her comments and Marzi responded to questions from Weber and the audience. The keynote and discussion were part of the course Gender, Power and Borders for second year students in the Bachelor’s in Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies of Radboud University. The meeting was closed with informal drinks.

About Lova
In the General Assembly–open for Lova members only–the Annual Report 2023 of Lova was shortly discussed as well as Lova’s activities so far in 2024 and the plans for 2025. After the students arrived organiser Tine Davids opened the public part of the meeting with first introducing Jasmijn Rana as chair of Lova. Rana talked about the mission and activities of Lova and explained why our organisation is still necessary since its start more than forty years ago.

Lecture of Sonja Marzi
In her lecture Volviendo a Vivir / Coming Back to Life: Urban trauma, activism and building emancipatory futures, Sonja Marzi presented her research project in the cities of Bogotá and Medellín in Colombia, conducted as a research fellow at London School of Economics 2020-2023. It was a collaborative project with twelve women from different neighbourhoods in each city. All these twenty-four women experienced displacement and are now living in poor neighbourhoods, often in peripheral areas of the cities as outcomes of invasions; most of them earn their living by informal labour. They used their smartphones for producing audio-visual data for the research project. Next to the displaced women in the neighbourhoods, also some academics, artists and filmmakers from Colombia and UK were involved in the project. The final product of the project is the documentary Volviendo a Vivir.

Marzi explained that due to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent travel restrictions she had only online contacts with the displaced women in Bogotá and Medellín and other people involved. Only in 2022 she participated in physical workshops with all research participants involved in each city. The central research question of the project was how displaced women make a living in the city and cope with and resist to gendered violence and urban inequalities.

Gendered violence against women
Most displacement of the women involved was originated because violence of soldiers, guerrilleros or gangs in rural areas, but could also be caused by economic reasons in overcrowded urban quarters or due to domestic violence. The concept of urban trauma was central in the research to describe and analyse physical and psychological violence the women experienced. Displacement involves loss of roots, place, and identity. This was illustrated by short movie tracks with impressive and sad stories of the women about their experiences and feelings. Examples were, amongst others, about women who had lived for days in the streets without shelter, about the discrimination and distrust against immigrants from rural areas, about difficulties in finding a job and be trusted.

Activism and resistance of women
Marzi also presented movie tracks with positive stories of the same women, showing their resilience and resistance. Some women were helped by others but most became active themselves to resist the violence and inequalities. Their activism could be large, collective, public and observed but also small, individual, domestic and hidden. Most important is that the women work together and create networks and groups to fight the problems collectively. In their work projects, participating in groups for healing of psychological wounds, and through demonstrations in the streets the women gain strength to continue their fight for a better future in the city, for themselves and their children. They show that not the ‘I’ but the ‘we’ is central in this process.

Co-producing knowledge
The research project of Marzi was focused on co-producing knowledge about the lives of displaced women in Bogotá and Medellín and their activism to improve their lives. A central role was given to producing audio-visual data by the women involved. Only in spring 2022 it was decided to present the data in a movie to disseminate the findings to a larger public. The ‘we’ does not only apply to the activism of the displaced women in the two Colombian cities but to all others involved in the project. Participating in the project not only strengthened the displaced women but the other project participants as well. The movie and academic publications will spread the knowledge. The lecture was closed by showing some further parts of the documentary.

Comments by discussant Sanne Weber
In her comments Sanne Weber praised Marzi’s commitment to contribute to the wellbeing of the displaced women participants in the two Colombian cities by her research project. Weber also valued the concepts of trauma biographies and urban trauma, meaning that the experiences of the displaced women in the past will always interfere with the ongoing physical and psychological gendered violence the displaced women meet with in their current urban life. Marzi’s description of displacement as loss of roots, place and identity shows the complexity of the phenomenon, according to Weber.

Marzi responded to some questions of Weber. Indeed, the displaced women from rural areas of value land and small animals highly but fear going back to their villages because of the ongoing conflicts. Marzi also elaborated on the relation between activism and healing of trauma and her use of the trauma concept in spite of critique on its Western origin. Finally, she shared that co-producing the documentary was not an easy thing. Most displaced women involved were not used to speaking up or share more personal experiences with outsiders. By filming with their smartphones they could express in their own words what they wanted to share to a wider public.

Discussion with audience
Several questions were brought up by the audience, consisting of Lova members and students. The gender issue in the research project was discussed. She found that women and men do have different coping strategies and women are more often than men leaders of activist organisations.  Networking and organising are very important for the healing of trauma. The women who participated in the project are involved in screening sessions of the documentary in other neighbourhoods of their cities, with Q and A sessions afterwards. Finally, Marzi shared some reflections on her own positionality in the research project.

For further information about the research project of Sonja Marzi:

  • Marzi, Sonja and Rachel Pain (2024) ‘Volviendo a Vivir’ (Coming back to life): Urban trauma, activism and building emancipatory futures. Urban Studies, 61(9): 1686–1701. DOI: 10.1177/00420980231213730  
  • Marzi, Sonja. 2023. Co-producing impact-in-process with participatory audio-visual research. Area, 55(2): 295-302. DOI: 10.1111/area.23851
  • Website of Sonja Marzi
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