BCMCR

Wednesday April 29, 2015 

4-6pm | Birmingham Centre for Media & Cultural Research | P441 

 

We absolutely love the Tear Gas Research Connection initiative that our friends Anna Feigenbaum (Bournemouth University) and John Horne (University of Birmingham) started last year + we’re partners (& we like it!) on the AHRC funded WW1 Engagement Centre Voices of War & Peace. So we’ve decided to bring these amazing initiatives, and the brains behind them, all together on a panel on April 29!

Join us at 4pm at the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research to discuss the military, policing, legal, commercial and medical aspects of tear gas, both in historic and more contemporary contexts. First used in 1914, tear gas is a legacy of WWI, developed as a chemical weapon for military use, then misleadingly rebranded as a “non-lethal” weapon used to repress protests around the world.

This panel will also explore how citizens have developed DIY gas mask instructions and home remedies, circulated transnationally in print and online and allowing for new kinds of ad-hoc “amateur practices” to emerge (i.e citizen journalists, citizen scientists, citizen lawyers, etc.). We will look at Arab countries such as Egypt, Bahrain and Syria, but we also want to widen the discussions to include case studies from Turkey, Russia, China and others.

 

Moderator: Dr. Dima Saber, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research

Panelists:

• Ala’a Shehabi – Bahrain Watch.
  Ala’a is an academic and activist who has been a firsthand witness to the often deadly use of tear gas in Bahrain to repress the pro-democracy movement. With Bahrain Watch she’s also worked to document its misue and campaigned to prevent further exports of tear gas to Bahrain.
• Neil Corney – Omega Research Foundation
  Neil researches and writes on a wide variety of military, security and police issues, including the testing and trade of ‘less lethal’ weapons, and the human rights and health implications of their use.
• John Horne – University of Birmingham / Tear Gas Research Connection
  John is a PhD student researching representations of state violence in contemporary visual culture. He is a member of Bahrain Watch and works as co-coordinator of the Connecting Tear Gas Research initiative.

 

The event will be live-streamed and we will open up to questions from the audience via Twitter. If you can’t physically be with us, join us online!

This event is organised as part of the AHRC funded WW1 Engagement Centre Voices of War & Peace and the Connecting Tear Gas Research initiative and is hosted by the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research at Birmingham City University.

RVSP here.

For more details contact Dima Saber on 0121 3317280 or @dimalb

 

       

 

Picture by Ahmed Al-Fardan, Bahrain.