The missing of the Western Front, First World War
By the end of the First World War, around 6-7 million people had disappeared. Many of those missing were soldiers whose bodies could not be recovered because of the heavy fighting and the shifting frontlines, because explosives had utterly destroyed them, or because they had been swallowed by battlefield mud. Sometimes, bodies had been recovered and hastily inhumed in makeshift graves, but with no foolproof way to identify them or to mark the tomb, especially as time passed. In addition, many nameless bodies were recovered, with no possibility to identify them.
To this day, around 1 million soldiers’ bodies are still missing (or not identified), just on the Western Front that stretches from the Flanders region in Belgium to Eastern France. Several dozen bodies are still found each year during what the farmers call the “Harvest of Bones” or during more systematic excavation projects conducted by official teams of archaeologists. Importantly, more than a century after the end of the war, many families are still searching and still hope that the body of their ancestor can be found and/or identified.
Among other issues, the Re(E)MBody project will explore:
– how families remember and look for their missing relatives, more than a century after the war;
– how the missing are reembodied in official and private forms of commemoration;
– how local, national and international institutions deal with the issue, and what happens when bodies of different nationalities are found and eventually identified;
– how the issue of the missing can generate tensions between various interest groups and objectives, for instance between civil society actors and the military.
Bosnia and Herzegovina: Living with disappearances
The project examines the impact of disappearance on families and communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The country’s history, shaped by a series of inter-group conflicts (World War I, World War II, and the 1992–1995 war) and two 20th-century totalitarian regimes, offers a compelling context for this study. Disappearance serves both as a source of connection and division. Families from different ethnic communities often develop a sense of solidarity through the widely shared experience of missing family members. However, these losses are frequently attributed to the actions of other ethnic groups, fostering mistrust and reinforcing divisions within society. At the individual level, the project examines coping mechanisms that enable individuals to process such tragedies. It also considers the foundational frameworks—whether religious, philosophical, anthropological, or spiritual—through which these experiences are given meaning and integrated into personal and communal narratives.
Enforced Disappearance in the Armenian–Azerbaijani Conflict: The Case of Missing Persons in Armenia
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, spanning over three decades, has resulted in the disappearance of thousands of individuals, leaving their families in a relentless search for loved ones who have gone missing during multiple episodes of armed violence. The number of missing persons has steadily increased over the years due to recurring conflicts, including the wars of the 1990s, the 2016 Four-Day War, the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, and the September 2023 Nagorno-Karabakh takeover.
Despite the multilayered nature of this conflict, spanning various episodes over three decades, the issue of the missing has not been widely discussed in political or academic spheres, often leaving families alone in their suffering and search for their loved ones. Even after decades have passed, grief, uncertainty, and hope persist in the everyday lives of those who still wait, with aching hearts, for the return of their beloved.
This research aims to uncover how families and communities remember those who have disappeared. It also examines how disappearances affect societal reconciliation. Additionally, the research also explores how the topic is addressed socially through the work of civil society and the production of news, written or audiovisual materials, art, movies, and literature.