ReconTrans (2019-2023) is an international comparative research project initiated and coordinated by KUN/VID Tromsø (Norway). The project examines how and to what extent 'reconciliation' as a transformative concept and practice takes place in association with truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs). Having its starting point in research monitoring the ongoing TRC process in Norway (2018-2022), ReconTrans engages in, and facilitates, comparative research across the South African, Canadian, and Norwegian / Nordic TRC experiences.
ReconTrans is rooted in a transformative research paradigm committed to values such as social justice and human rights. Asymmetric power relations are more often than not integral to the injustices and traumas caused by the political violence addressed by TRCs. Mindful of this, ReconTrans assumes that ‘reconciliation’ is a transformative concept addressing and renegotiating such power relations, informed by moral values such as truth, justice, peace, etc. ReconTrans takes a multidisciplinary approach, informed by research fields as transitional justice, indigenous research, and theology.
The ReconTrans research network was established through research conferences in Cape Town, South Africa, in 31 May 2019 and in Tromsø, Norway, in 29-30 October 2019. The first ReconTrans book is expected to be published by the end of 2021 under the title Trading Justice for Peace? Critical Perspectives on the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in South Africa, Canada, and Norway (Cape Town: AOSIS). The next ReconTrans conferences are scheduled in Vancouver, Canada, 24-26 November 2021 and in Oslo, Norway, 4-6 May 2022.
ReconTrans involves research collaboration among researchers at VID Specialized University (Tromsø and Oslo, Norway), the University of the Western Cape (Cape Town, South Africa), Vancouver School of Theology (Vancouver, Canada), Umeå University (Umeå, Sweden) and University College Stockholm (Stockholm, Sweden).
The research monitoring the process in Norway examines (1) the meanings of ‘reconciliation’ negotiated in the political pre-TRC phase; (2) the political, social and healing aspects of reconciliation emerging, expressed and negotiated in the encounter between the TRC and civil society in the commission phase; and (3) the negotiation of reconciliation in the interface between politics and civil society in the initial post-TRC phase after the submission of the TRC’s final report.
