March 2021 marks the 10-year anniversary of the conflict in Syria. Since 2011, more than 12 million people have left the country and around 30,000 individuals have resettled in the UK. Amid the devastation of the pandemic, the world has forgotten these refugees.

The ‘Syria and Silence’ project was created in response to the silence surrounding the war in Syria where a peaceful uprising against the Syrian regime almost eight years ago turned into a humanitarian catastrophe. With ‘Syria and Silence’ we want to reach out to the diasporic and local Syrian migrant communities living in Oxford, the UK and elsewhere, and give them a platform to express themselves. This will include hosting an essay competition for young adults (in Arabic, English and Kurdish) and creating a pop-up library – Mektebe – in Blackwell Hall at Weston library during Michaelmas Term 2021. Mektebe will be staffed by librarians from the local Syrian Oxford community and be accessible for the public for browsing and reading during the usual opening hours. Mektebe means literally ‘a place of learning’, and we hope that our pop-up-library becomes a place where people learn about and from each other.

‘Syria and Silence’ is a project by the Silence Hub and the Oxford Network for Armenian Genocide Research.

We are hosting this event with our partners of the Syrian Voices project – a new oral history project that shines a light on the struggles and triumphs of ordinary Syrians now resettled in the U.K. through a series of film and zoom recorded interviews. Their aim is to create a lasting digital archive, using community and participatory history frames and representing perspectives which are often over-looked in the archival record.

You will be contacted within 48 hours of the event with the Zoom joining link.
Please be aware tickets will close an hour before the event.