Visualising War and Peace

Given our interest in war and peace storytelling, it was only a matter of time before we turned our attention to Christopher Nolan’s film version of The Odyssey. In this episode, Alice asks two guests for their reactions.
Dr Emily Hauser is an award-winning ancient historian and Times bestselling author of Mythica: A New History of Homer’s World, through the Women Written Out Of It. Her research focuses on women in antiquity, gender studies, Homer, and the theory and practice of classical reception, particularly in contemporary women’s writing. Emily’s writing has been featured on the BBC and multiple other podcasts, and her books have been published and translated across the world, bringing ancient stories and women into the present.
Dr Owen Rees is an interdisciplinary researcher with a core specialism in ancient history, whose latest book is called The Far Edges of the Known World: A New Perspective On Our Ancient Civilizations. His research interests focus on ancient Greek history and the relationship between warfare, civic society, and veteranship. As part of this research, he is one of the founders and leaders of The Returning Solider Network. Owen is also interested in the misuse of ancient history in the modern day, both in public discourse and also in pseudohistory. He is the founder and lead editor of badancient.com, which brings together a growing network of specialists to fact-check common claims made about the ancient world.
The episode begins with reflections on the stories which Homer's original poem told about conflict's aftermath and post-conflict homecomings. As we review Nolan's adaptation, we analyse its representation of moral injury, the erasure of women's wartime and post-wartime experiences, and the othering of enemies. Emily underlines the gap between how Homer's original poem narrated the near outbreak of civil war at the end of The Odyssey and Nolan's much more reductive 'happy ever after' ending, as one example of missing complexity. Owen reflects on the film's incorportation of modern tropes in veteran storytelling (including the pathology of the 'broken veteran'). And together, we discuss what we might do differently, if we were adapting this epic post-conflict story for the screen.
Tune in to find out more! For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please visit the University of St Andrews' Visualising War website and the Ancient Peace Studies Network.

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin

In this episode, Alice interviews theatre makers Jennie Dunne and Jonathan D'Young about their new play, Long After the Labyrinth, which draws on ancient myth to explore post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding today.
As the episode explains, the Ancient Peace Studies Network at the University of St Andrews has teamed up with theatre company NMT Automatics to create an epic new play inspired by the myth of the Minotaur and the true tale of the lost Jews of Crete. A gripping narrative told via text, movement and shadow-play, we follow the life of Rena Depas as she embarks upon a labyrinthine quest to find peace in the wake of conflict.
While hiding from Nazi soldiers who are rounding up everyone in her community, Rena hides in an ancient olive tree and tumbles into the famous labyrinth of Knossos where she encounters the Minotaur. The labyrinth becomes a liminal space where she begins to process feelings of loss, grief and anger – and where the audience can explore different dimensions of post-conflict transition and peacebuilding. Will Rena be able to keep the Minotaur at bay, and what will that take? Join us on a journey of peace-seeking and peace-making, ancient and modern.
For this production, NMT Automatics have brought together a special team of creatives, who have worked with some of the most internationally renowned contemporary theatre companies, including: 1927, Gecko, Theatre Re, Ephemeral Ensemble, Barefaced Greek and Les Enfants Terribles.
Produced by NMT Automatics, Chromolume, and the Ancient Peace Studies Network and supported by Arts Council England, The Society for Classical Studies, East London & Essex Liberal Synagogue, JW3, Etz Hayyim Synagogue, Crete, and the University of St Andrews.
Alongside the performances, we will be holding a series of peace storytelling workshops, aimed at writers and performers and anyone interested in telling more peace stories: https://apsn.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2026/09/19/peace-storytelling-workshops/.

Upstairs At The Gatehouse
Highgate Village, London N6 4BD
Dates: Wednesday 21st October – Sunday 8th November 2026
Times: Tuesday – Saturday 7:30pm; Sunday 3:00pm
No performance on Sunday 25th October
Tickets available HERE 

The Byre Theatre, St Andrews, Thursday 12th November 2026
Followed by a post-show Q&A with Prof. Alice König 
Performing Peace Workshop on the 13th of November led by Prof. Alice König & NMTA. 
Tickets available HERE

Manchester Jewish Museum, Saturday 28th November 2026 
Followed by a post-show Q&A with Prof. Alice König
Performing Peace Workshop on the 29th of November led by Prof. Alice König & NMTA.
Tickets available HERE

 JW3, London, Tuesday 26th January 2027
Wheelchair-accessible performance 
Performing Peace Workshop on the evening of 19th of January led by Prof. Alice König & NMTA. 

 APGRD, University of Oxford, Tuesday 19th January 2027
Afternoon seminar and performance of selected scenes, followed by a discussion with the performers and Prof. Alice König.
For further details contact vispeace@st-andrews.ac.uk
Tune in to find out more! For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please visit the University of St Andrews' Visualising War website and the Ancient Peace Studies Network.

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin

In this episode Alice interviews Dr Seth Richardson, who is based at the University of Chicago and Managing Editor of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies. Seth’s research focuses on ancient Mesopotamia, and ranges widely over political and economic history, theories of state sovereignty, legitimacy, rebellion and insurgency, and all kinds of violence from war to non-state and community-level violence. He has published many articles and co-authored several books, including – most recently – ‘Monarchies and the Organization of Power: Ancient Egypt and Babylonia Compared, published by CUP in 2025. Seth is also a member of the  Ancient Peace Studies Network, based at the University of St Andrews, and he has been bringing his expertise on ancient Mesopotamia to our project, helping to uncover aspects of ancient peace history which have not been excavated in much depth until now. 
This episode focuses particularly on what ancient Mesopotamian omens can tell us about how war, peace and everything between were understood and experienced from the ground up. Seth contrasts what elite-focused sources tell us about military ambition and imperial conquest with the more complex story painted by thousands of cuneiform tablets that shed light on everyday concerns. As he explains, banditry, civil unrest, environmental crises and disease seemed to loom much larger than major armed conflicts. In fact, the omens suggest that many in ancient Mesopotamia lived in a state of recurring insecurity - what Seth refers to as 'hybrid peace'. Together, we discuss how excavating a 'people's history' of ancient peace can significantly change how we visualise antiquity. 
We hope you enjoy the episode. For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please visit the University of St Andrews' Visualising War website and the Ancient Peace Studies Network.

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin

In this episode Alice interviews Dr Stephan Blum, a Research Associate at the Institute for Prehistory, Early History and Medieval Archaeology, at the University of Tübingen. Stephan is a member of the Troy Project, a long-running archaeological collaboration between the universities of Cincinnati and Tübingen, designed to shed more light on the physical remains and social history of one of the ancient world’s most evocative places. Stephan is also a member of the Ancient Peace Studies Network, based at the University of St Andrews, and he has been bringing his expertise in ethnoarchaeology to the project, helping to uncover aspects of ancient peace history which have not been excavated in much depth until now.
Troy is famous for the ten-year siege which Homer wrote about in The Iliad and The Odyssey - but this is only a fraction of the city's 3000-year old story. In this episode, we discuss how Homer's famous war stories have distorted our vision of ancient Troy and we consider what we can learn from its wider history. Stephan explains the challenges of looking for peace in the archaeological record, but he also underlines how much evidence we can find at Troy of conflict prevention, conflict resilience and post-conflict transformation. The result is a very different picture of a place that is almost synonymous with war in popular culture. Contextualising Troy's war-torn reputation by excavating more of its peace history teaches us a lot about the dominance of conflict narratives as well as the value of looking for evidence of local, everyday and personal peace across antiquity.
We hope you enjoy the episode. For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please visit the University of St Andrews' Visualising War website and the Ancient Peace Studies Network. You can read more about Stephan's work on Rethinking Troy here.

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin

In this episode, Alice interviews Dr Florence Gaub, Director of the Research Division at the NATO Defense College in Rome. A security expert and futurist, she has held key positions such as deputy director at the EU Institute for Security Studies, foresight advisor at the EU Council, and special advisor to EU Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič. Beginning her career at NATO’s Middle East Faculty in 2009, Florence now focuses on strategic foresight and geopolitical trends. Her publications include the bestseller Zukunft: Eine Bedienungsanleitung (2023 – soon to be published in English as Future: A Manual), the EU’s Global Trends to 2030 (2019), and The Cauldron: NATO’s Libya Operation (2018). Florence serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Complex Risks and is a member of the World Science Fiction Society; and last year, she published a graphic novel, NATO 2099, which we discuss in this episode.
To get us started, Florence outlines the work of the Research Division at the NATO Defence College, and we discuss the challenges of looking beyond known and predictable futures. We reflect on the fast pace of change across many domains today, and our collective experience of 'future shock' as we grapple with many different kinds of uncertainty and transition at one time. Florence discusses some of the ways in which war in particular is being transformed, pointing to cognitive warfare, biological warfare and grey war, where distinctions between military and civilian spheres of action become blurred. 
This leads us to consider the tools we can cultivate to predict the unpredictable. We chat about the power of boredom in prompting us to pay attention to 'weak signals' and the role of imagination in visualising future scenarios. Florence stresses the importance of creative methods, both to foster and to communicate futures thinking. She discusses some of her own initiatives in this space, such as the creation of 'newspapers from the future'; and we delve deep into her graphic novel NATO 2099, which transports readers to a world that our children and grandchildren might inhabit, prompting us to reflect on both technological and human methods of prediction. 
We hope you enjoy the episode! If you do, you might want to check out a couple of episodes from our archive which also explore speculative and useful fiction.
For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please visit the University of St Andrews' Visualising War website and the Ancient Peace Studies Network.

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin