Orchestrating listening situations in restorative transitional justice initiatives

The Orchestrating listening situations in restorative justice initiatives (ORLI) partnership's overall goal is to increase our
understanding of the functions and modes in which listening is performed by conflict community members -victims,
offenders, community members- within five types of restoratively-oriented situations as orchestrated by 'operative groups'
-task-oriented groups- within two types of contexts: (1) a formal, state-led context in truth-seeking and acknowledgment of
responsibility proceedings in Colombia's Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP) (a war crimes tribunal); and (2) an artistic
(research-creation) context using digital sound archives of the said SJP's proceedings in combination with a documentary
theatre acting technique and a choral singing approach to engage a wider target audience (including Colombians forced to live
abroad by the conflict) as listener-participants in an expanded transitional justice dialogue. Its aim is to provide conceptual
and practice models that can inform the work of transitional justice and peacebuilding practitioners working across different
fields including state-led, educational, and arts-based mechanisms in Colombia, Canada and beyond. While Colombia's
ongoing transitional justice context is the main context of study, our team includes Canadian experts in restorative transitional
justice to enact knowledge exchanges throughout the partnership, and inform our findings with insights of mutual benefit.

The ORLI partnership brings together Concordia University's Acts of Listening Lab, Dalhousie University's Restorative Lab,
McMaster University's Centre for Human Rights and Restorative Justice, the United College at the University of Waterloo's
programs in Human Rights and Indigenous Studies, the Externado de Colombia University's faculties of law and social
sciences, Universidad del Rosario's Human Rights Research Group (Colombia), and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana's Scenic
Arts Department (Colombia). Concordia's Acts of Listening Lab has a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the
Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP) (a Colombian war crimes tribunal) to exchange knowledge about issues concerning
performing oral history testimonials in restorative justice proceedings. That MoU makes that tribunal an informal collaborator
of this partnership.

The partnership director, Dr. Luis C Sotelo, is the director of Concordia's Acts of Listening Lab, whose mission is to
investigate the transformative potential of performing oral histories by people impacted by violence. Our partnership grew out
organically out of previous informal collaborations between the PI and all six co-applicants and four collaborators from
Colombia and Canada who are part of the team. They contribute wide-ranging and thorough expertise in listening research,
restorative transitional justice theory and practice, social psychology and organizational psychology, qualitative research
methods, and somatic practices and choral singing as a means to facilitate embodied modes of listening with mindfulness. We
are honored to have in our team as collaborators Dr. Julieta Lemaitre, Magistrate of the SJP and Professor Bernard Duhaime,
the current United Nations' Special Rapporteur on truth, justice and reparation.

Through field work and a situational analysis approach, we will document and critically describe how teams become
'operative groups' to orchestrate the distinct types of listening situations under study; we will produce an online platform
giving access to two practice guides aimed at transitional justice practitioners, educators and socially engaged artists on
values and standards for orchestrating listening situations in RTJ initiatives. And we will test one of our guides through a
research-creation method.