This publication follows a multi-year project on Experiencing Violence which included a series of roundtables focusing on Recognising Violence, Violence as a Process, and Addressing Violence, an international conference on Experiencing Violence, and a number of workshops and symposia exploring different facets of violence. These activities brought together academics, policymakers, officials and practitioners, some of whom are represented in the following contributions.
It presents a number of short papers that explore problems of identification, questions of recognition, and the narratives, languages, images, myths and mediation that recur in the context of violence. The violence experienced could range from the spectacular to the everyday, inflicted against people, objects, or symbols. Throughout it will be demonstrated that our approach to violence needs to be reassessed in order to develop a better understanding of how violence might be defined and conceptualised. The articles presented here examine the ways in which we approach the understanding of violence and seek to explain and interpret it, embracing the full complexity of violence as a social, historical and political phenomenon, and the implications that this has for research and policy engagement.