Remembrance Week Panel: “In the Aftermath: Documenting and Researching Victim Support Groups”
Syracuse University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center’s (SCRC) is hosting a hybrid panel discussion in commemoration of this year’s Remembrance Week on Friday, October 25, 2024 from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. (EST) on Zoom and in Bird Library’s Peter Graham Scholarly Commons (Room 114). Organized by the Pan Am Flight 103/Lockerbie Air Disaster Archives at the Special Collections Research Center, the panel is titled “In The Aftermath: Documenting and Researching Victim Support Groups” and will focus on the collection, preservation and use of important records in the aftermath of tragedies and disasters. Click here to register for the Zoom webinar.
Moderated by Vanessa St.Oegger-Menn, Pan Am 103 Archivist & Assistant University Archivist, event panelists are Jelena Watkins, co-director of the Centre for Collective Trauma in the United Kingdom and member of the Archiving Disaster Support Group Records project team, and Ezra Rudolph, research associate for Contemporary and Cultural History at the University of Göttingen in Germany. Watkins and Rudolph will each talk briefly about their work and experiences and share insights into the lasting significance and unique challenges of victim support group records in documenting the aftermath of tragic events. A moderated discussion will follow with questions and answers.
The panel is free and open to the public. Communication Access Realtime Translation will be provided. If you require accessibility accommodations, please email Max Wagh at mlwagh@syr.edu by October 18, 2024.
About the Panelists:
Jelena Watkins is a psychotherapist specializing in helping people affected by terrorism and other collective trauma events. She is co-director of the Centre for Collective Trauma, a collaborative network of professionals specializing in psychosocial aspects of collective grief, loss, trauma and disasters. Her experience includes helping design and coordinate support networks and group programs for bereaved people, survivors and responders following incidents including the UK-based survivors of the Paris attacks (2015), the Manchester Arena Attack (2017) and the Grenfell Fire (2017). Following the loss of her brother in the 9/11 attacks, Jelena became a founder-member and trustee of September 11 UK Families Support Group. She is currently Support Officer for Disaster Action, a charity founded in 1991 by people with direct, collective experience of over 30 disasters as bereaved people and survivors. On the Executive Committee of this group, she has advised those responding to major emergencies including the Boxing Day Tsunami (2004), the London Bombings (2005) and the Tunisia terror attack (2015). She is deputy chair of the Humanitarian Assistance and Psychosocial Support Expert Group within the Counter-Terrorism Preparedness Network and a member of INVVICTM, an international network of experts in supporting victims of terrorism and mass violence.
Ezra Rudolph is a research associate for Contemporary and Cultural History at the University of Göttingen. Their dissertation project focuses on survivors of terrorism who became activists in Europe and the United States since the 1980s, touching fields of political, emotional and moral history. Ezra holds BA and MA degrees in History, German Philology and Education. Together with their supervisor, Professor Petra Terhoeven, Ezra serves as an expert on victims of terrorism for the German government. Their research has brought Ezra to Great Britain, France, Israel and the United States, where they interviewed survivors, observed memorial practices and presented their work. From fall 2023 to spring 2024, Ezra was a visiting research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC. This brought them to Syracuse, where they worked with the holdings of the Pan Am Flight 103/Lockerbie Air Disaster Archives and conducted oral history interviews with family members and other members of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, Inc.