Contested Memoryscapes in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Presence of Absence in Everyday Peace examines what lies beyond immediate, visible politics: silences, secrets, voids, and erasures. Through the conceptual lens of “presence of absence,” the book explores the tension between the loss in the past and the politics surrounding that loss in the present. Drawing on emplaced, embodied, and narrative perspectives, it advances understandings of the impact of memory politics on peace and offers new insights into lived realities in Bosnia and Herzegovina – insights that are relevant for other societies grappling with the long-term consequences of mass violence.

Johanna Mannergren is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Södertörn University, Sweden. Her research concerns peace processes, and she has published widely on topics related to memory, transitional justice, gender, and reconciliation. Her work includes the award-winning, co-authored monograph Peace and the Politics of Memory (2024) and the co-authored monograph Troubling Testimonies: Women’s Narratives of War, Genocide, and Sexual Violence (2026).

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Searching for Presence of Absence in Contested Memoryscapes
Chapter 1. Places and Traces: The Power of Authentic Sites in the Postwar Memoryscape
Chapter 2. The Meaning of Silence: The Productive Potential of Silence in Everyday Peace
Chapter 3. The Missing and the Mass Graves: The Liminality of Secrets
Chapter 4. Everyday Objects in Museums: Recovering Memories through the Stuff from the Siege
Chapter 5. Gendering Memory Politics: The Invisibility and Hypervisibility of Women’s Bodies
Chapter 6. Moving Memories: Narrative (In)coherence and the Refugee Experience
Chapter 7. Art and Presence of Absence: Aesthetic Interventions into Loss
Conclusions: Taking Presence of Absence into Account
References
About the author
Index