Creative Research Methods and Civilian Agency in Civil Wars: Crafting the Past Through Memory Workshops in Colombia

This article explores the potentialities of memory workshops for studying civilian agency in violent settings. Drawing from field research with campesino communities in Colombia, it provides a description of the workshops’ implementation process, including creative tools such as memory web creation, collective drawing of timelines and exploration of emotional biographies. Through these activities, campesinos reflected on the embodied and discursive relations within their communities, evoking experiences and practices of wartime. The article highlights the limitations of conventional research methods and proposes memory workshops as a methodological alternative that foregrounds the co-production of data, facilitating the emergence of localised knowledge and self-authorship.