Towards an anthropology of the missing: ethnographic encounters in post-Assad Syria

Seminar with Charlotte Al-Khalili, Department of Anthropology.

This ethnographic paper explores the aftermaths of the Syrian revolution and war, a conflict that has led to the death of at least 600 000 Syrians and the enforced disappearance of a minimum of 140 000 individuals. The Syrian revolution started in 2011; by 2013 it had turned into a fully-fledged war, and by 2017 more than half of Syria’s population had been internally or externally displaced. When the Assad regime fell on December 8 2024 the country had also witnessed the widespread destruction of its environment and cities with 150 000 buildings razed to the ground.

This research draws on extensive fieldwork in the Southern city of Daraa, where the revolution first started. In Daraa, Charlotte Al-Khalili lived and worked with Syrians returning from internal and external displacement and families of disappeared and martyrs.

In this presentation, she will introduce the concept of the missing and show how it plays a central role to seize what has disappeared, what has been erased and what is no longer present, first, as an ethnographic category and analytical device and, second, as a heuristic tool that pushes me to rethink anthropology’s methodology and use collaborative methods.

Bio

Charlotte Al-Khalili is a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at UCPH. Her work focuses on political violence and its afterlives: revolution, war, enforced displacement and transitional justice processes in Syria, Lebanon and Turkey. Her research explores the multi-scalar dimensions of these processes studying their everyday and intimate effects and experiences. In her current fieldworks in Lebanon and Syria, Charlotte uses a broad range of methods: forum theatre, collaborative mapping and collective filming.  

She is the author of Waiting for the Revolution to End (UCL, 2023) and the co-editor of Revolution Beyond the Event (UCL, 2023). 
Before joining UCPH she has hold postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Sussex, UCL and CNRS (France).