This project seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex roots, dynamics and diverse experiences of forced displacement, deprivation of nationality and the destruction of access to healthcare as contributor to the genocide of the Rohingya community in Myanmar. The research will develop along a number of lines, interweaving the thematic strands of genocide, ‘slow violence’, visual storytelling, statelessness, trajectories of forced displacement and health destruction.

A deeper understanding of the specific nature and roots of forced displacement, statelessness and the destruction of access to healthcare for the Rohingya community in Myanmar is vital to the development of effective policy solutions. Yet, such solutions have been elusive. The proposed research builds on a successful track record of previous research and practical field experience in Burma and neighbouring Bangladesh from 2006 to 2016

‘Archaeology’ connotes excavation. The sense in which I understand this visual excavation as a novel representational and narrative form that intellectually and experientially brings to life – in a way that the written word cannot – the effects of chronic displacement and insecurity on individuals, families and communities, in particular the ‘slow violence’ it inflicts. The construction of this ‘visual archaeology’ not only shows the physicality of genocide, it also has the capacity to expose, through the collection of visual records, a legacy of societal destruction which is so often unseen, unrecognised, and unreported by the international community and global news media due to its less viscerally violent character.