Children Born of War: Past, Present and Future (Routledge Studies in Modern History)

This volume presents research from an international, interdisciplinary, and intersectoral research project in which 15 doctoral researchers explored a range of issues related to the life-course experiences of children born of war in 20th-century conflicts.

Children Born of War (CBOW), children fathered by foreign soldiers and born to local mothers during and after armed conflicts, have long been neglected in the research of the social consequences of war. Based on research projects completed under the auspices of the Horizon2020-funded international and interdisciplinary research and training network CHIBOW (www.chibow.org), this book examines the psychological and social impact of war on these children. It focusses on three separate but interrelated themes: firstly, it explores methodological and ethical issues related to research with war-affected populations in general and children born of war in particular. Secondly, it presents innovative historical research focussing specifically on geopolitical areas that have hitherto been unexplored; and thirdly, it addresses, from a psychological and psychiatric perspective, the challenges faced by children born of war in post-conflict communities, including stigmatisation, discrimination, within the significant context of identity formation when faced with contested memories of volatile post-war experiences.

The book offers an insight into the social consequences of war for those children associated with the ‘enemy’ by virtue of their direct biological link.

Sabine Lee is a professor of Modern History at the University of Birmingham. Her research has spanned a range of themes in contemporary history and, more recently, interdisciplinary research on conflict and security with particular emphasis on conflict-related sexual violence and children born of war.

Heide Glaesmer, psychologist/psychotherapist, is the head of the research group ‘Psychotraumatology and Migration Research’ at the University of Leipzig and was the CHIBOW network’s director of training.

Barbara Stelzl-Marx is director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on Consequences of War (BIK), Graz – Vienna – Raabs, Austria, professor for contemporary history at University of Graz, and vice-president of the Austrian UNESCO Commission, Vienna.