"The objective of this project is to build upon, solidify, formalise and condense the recently initiated, but as yet informal, relationships between leading research institutions representing different regions and historical traditions in order to conduct joint research and participate in knowledge exchange to identify new paradigms for understanding how national identities are disrupted and formed by the traumas of history. By moving this consortium from an informal, ad hoc set of alliances to a structured programme of exchanges, the SPeCTReSS programme, we will generate new research results and new methodologies across the disciplinary spectrum we represent, a rich transfer of knowledge between institutions, research groups and culturally inscribed traditionas of scholarship, generating the basis for long term, sstainable cooperation between the partners. The basis of the research question we share is as follows: In contemporary scholarship, much discussion of national identity is framed in a context of something specific that has come before: post-colonial, post-war, post-apartheid, post-communism, etc.. More useful, however, than such contested terms as nationalism or patriotism, is that of cultural trauma. ""culturally defined and interpreted shock to the cultural tissue of a society."" SPeCTReSS will pursue this revised notion not just in theoretical and historical terms, but focussing on the cultural production of affected communities."