On January 24, 2026, Re-(E)MBody project members Élise Féron and Anush Petrosyan presented their ongoing research with Vadim Romashov at the Between Peripheries Inaugural Conference of the CEEShub in Tallinn, Estonia.
The article that three Re-(E)MBody project members are currently co-authoring and that was presented at the conference, studies security through the issue of missing persons in the South Caucasus. The article focuses on missing persons in the context of the Georgian–Abkhazian conflict and the First Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan, both of which took place in the 1990s. Through an empirically rich contribution, the paper reveals alternative or more encompassing understandings of national security through practices of the families of the missing. This methodologically diverse article provides a “thick description” of the practices of relatives of the missing, examining how these practices interact with and potentially reshape narratives on disappearances.
The presentation of Élise Féron and Anush Petrosyan at the conference generated fruitful discussions with the audience, revealing interest across disciplines and research backgrounds. It provided a truly crucial space to have a dialogic encounter with researchers working on the South Caucasus and/or in disappearance studies to compare existing approaches, inspire transdisciplinary dialogue, and receive encouraging feedback for further development of the paper.