In the talk the role of collective memory of conflict in the two communities in Cyprus (Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots) and the involvement of other countries in the Cyprus issue (Turkey, Greece, etc). I will then discuss the interplay between oral history accounts of life in formerly mixed villages in Cyprus and how these oral accounts and memories pivot around the collective memory of each community. Then I will discuss how representations of the past closely aligned with master narratives of conflict relate to intergroup relations between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots in Cyprus today (national identities, prejudice, trust, forgiveness, intergroup contact, perspective taking) and the current efforts to conflict transformation and reaching a solution to the Cyprus issue. I will argue that one of the main difficulties in reaching a solution in Cyprus is in fact the inability of the two separate educational systems to reflect on such master narratives and their role in the perpetuation of conflict.
Charis Psaltis was born in Cyprus. He is an Associate Professor of Social and Developmental Psychology at the University of Cyprus. He studied at the Pedagogical Academy of Cyprus (Teacher's Diploma, 1993), at the University of Cyprus (Degree in Primary Education, 1999), and at Panteion University, Athens (Degree in Psychology, 2000). He followed graduate studies at the University of Cambridge (MPhil, 2001 and PhD, 2005, in Social and Developmental Psychology). He also worked as a Post-doctoral researcher at the Oxford Center for the Study of Intergroup Conflict, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford.
He published papers in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, European Journal of Social Psychology, British Journal of Developmental Psychology, Culture & Psychology, Papers on Social Representations and Human Development. His book with Zapiti, A. entitled "Interaction, Communication and Development: Psychological Development as a social Process" was published in April 2014 by Routledge. In May 2015 the book entitled "Social Relations in Human and Societal Development" co-edited with Alex Gillespie and Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont was published by Palgrave Macmillan. In 2017 his co-edited volume with Mario Carretero and Sabina Cehajic-Clancy entitled “History Education and Conflict Transformation: Social Psychological Theories, History Teaching and Reconciliation” will be published by Palgrave Macmillan.