Centre for Language Education Research   
School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work
Queen’s University Belfast 

Research Seminar: Failed States//Creative Resistances – language and word-choice in co-creative research with punks in Belfast, Banda Aceh (Indonesia) and Kosovo

Speaker: Dr. Jim Donaghey , Ulster University - Coleraine

All welcome! No need to register.

Abstract: The AHRC-funded research project ‘Failed States and Creative Resistances: the everyday life of punks in Belfast, Banda Aceh and Kosovo’ has been led by Principal Investigator Jim Donaghey since 2021. The creative practice and industry of the punk communities in each of these post-conflict places is the focus of the project, explored through the co-curation of vinyl compilation albums, hosting of public listening events, and dissemination of the physical compilation triple-set through DIY cultural networks worldwide. You can learn more about the compilations, and listen in, here: https:/jimdonaghey.noblogs.org/failed-states-creative-resistances-2/ The contested contexts of Belfast, Banda Aceh and Kosovo have each been marked by legacies of conflict – and while the project emphatically seeks to step outside of the narrow narrative confines of ‘post-conflict studies’, these issues have inevitably animated the curatorial dialogues that underpin the project. In this Research Seminar, Jim will detail some of the sensitive issues around language and word-choice that have emerged as this co-creative project continues to unfold, and how this particular thematic focus reveals the terrain of creative resistance in each of the individual contexts amidst the broader flows of global punk counter-culture.

Bio: Jim Donaghey is a punk working in academia, currently at Ulster University. His research specialises in the interplay between radical political movements and counter-cultural creativity (such as: punk and anarchism; skateboarding and occupation of public space; bike punx and glib post-apocalyptic carnivals). Jim’s research activity has been underpinned by co-creativity as a means to develop meaningful dialogue and bolster ethical rigour, usually from an insider (or insider-adjacent) perspective. He continues to make noisy music, despite appeals to desist, most recently with a synthesiser rave punk duo called Them’Uns. (https://themuns.bandcamp.com/)