Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Epilogue
An Afterthought on a
Work in Progress
and a Forethought
towards Its Future
Luisa Passerini*
This collection of writings is linked, in various ways, with the IOM
intervention in Kosovo aiming, as Natale Losi writes in his introduction,
at “the psychological recovery/support of a community” and
including the creation of the Archives of Memory. Within this context, the
three first essays are based on research done in Kosovo, while the research
for the fourth essay was done in Serbia. Then follows a contribution to the
Archives by various authors based in Italy, as a place of reception for
Kosovar refugees and a venue for possible dialogue with them. The
researchers who engaged in this research, and whose contributions are collected
here, offer a diverse range of competence: history and oral history,
anthropology and social science. They found themselves placed in a situation
that allowed them to perform their disciplinary competence, while
being part of an experiment in assisting, or simply being in contact with,
people who had suffered severely and were undergoing dramatic changes
in their lives. An impulse of solidarity, the desire to know, and the effort to
use one’s knowledge in a way which is not only academic, were among the
motivations that led the writers of this collection – except of course Anton
Berishaj, who is a Kosovar sociologist – to engage in working with the
*Professor of history of the twentieth century at the European University Institute in
Florence.
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