IULM Flow Talk 32: Public archaeology for displaced communities

Archaeology, through understanding the testimonies of the past, helps to understand who we are, where we come from and where we are going: in a few words, it is an unsuspected compass that allows us to orient ourselves in the present.
In this perspective, especially for refugees fleeing war, confrontation with the archaeological heritage of the country of origin is a valuable tool to imagine and build the future from their roots and from a personal interpretation of memory, in an uninterrupted flow of cultural production that marks the continuity between past, present and future.

So how can archaeology become a maieutic tool at the service of refugee communities? What is the social and institutional framework in which education and training projects for young refugees can develop? The issue is highly relevant in Europe today, and certainly a look at past experiences in contexts of humanitarian crisis can be enlightening.

Together with Dr. Gioia Zenoni, Project Manager of the HumanLab of the Department of Humanities at Università IULM and Dr. Emanuela Sebastiani, Head of Humanitarian Language and Interpretation Courses of the InZone project at the University of Geneva, we will discuss public engagement and digital tools for the fruition and enhancement of cultural heritage and we will visit the Azraq refugee camp in Jordan, which has been hosting tens of thousands of Syrian refugees since 2014 under the auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in synergy with the Kingdom of Jordan.

Bio Emanuela Sebastiani

As a scientific collaborator at InZone, Emanuela Sebastiani is responsible for the Language Training programme, which includes the English and French language pathways. As a practicing conference interpreter, she is one of the co-authors of the Rapid Response Module for Humanitarian Interpreting, and is currently involved in developing training resources for humanitarian interpreters in refugee settings.

Bio Gioia Zenoni

Gioia Zenoni, an archaeologist specializing in Classical Archaeology, worked for several years in the Middle East and was deputy director of the first Italian archaeological mission in Palmyra, Syria. She currently works on communication projects for archaeological sites and museums and on multimedia products for archaeological dissemination (documentaries, websites, digital exhibitions, interactive apps). He is project manager of the HumanLab of the Department of Humanities.