Within the TPO Program for Interdisciplinary Learning and Research (PILAR), the First International Conference and Interdisciplinary classroom: "Trauma , Memory , Healing" was held on 12-13th July, 2014 in Tuzla and Potocari, aiming at a common and critical thinking about the deeper roots of social trauma, such as collective violence, war and genocide, and sharing the experiences and knowledge about these concepts and their mechanisms of action. Also, our goals include a deeper understanding of the interactions between different groups, as well as initiating interdisciplinary learning that goes beyond the group divisions in order to broaden the vision and new possibilities of collective healing.
The Conference and Interdisciplinary classroom gathered eminent scientists/activists from Bosnia, Serbia, Australia and America: Academician D. Lovrenovic, Prof. Dr. Alija Sutovic, Prof. Dr. Hariz Halilovic, Prof. Dr. Esmina Avdibegovic, Prof. Dr. Jasmina Husanovic, Prof. Dr. Damir Arsenijevic, assistant professor Enes Osmancevic, assistant professor Patrick McCarthy, assistant professor Mevludin Hasanovic, assistant professor Edisa Gazetic, Dr. Nermina Kravic, Dr. Amra Delic, Dr. Branka Antic Stauber, Srdjan Susnica, BSc. iur., Rade Radovanovic, B. Sc. journalist and Dr. Zilka Spahic Siljak, the TPO Program Director.
In her opening remarks Dr. Amra Delic cited the need to work together to address challenges facing post-conflict societies, and encouraged delegates to build a momentum to look at things critically and to bring new initiatives through active participation. The Vice Rector, Prof. Dr. Rejhana Dervisevic, in her opening address, had a great pleasure to welcome all the participants of the Interdisciplinary Classroom on behalf of the University of Tuzla, and to wish them a successful outcome and a fruitful cooperation.
On the first day of The Conference the participants were taken through four panels on the different aspects to the topic: Healing History; Trauma, Genocide and Gender; Context after genocide and mass violence; Questioning Trauma and Social Change.
Distinguished opening lecturer: Seductive historiography: false history, false identity is given by Academician Dubravko Lovrenovic, who cited that in recent political reality – with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia as the two states where Croats live, an identity appeared as a pressing issue, because postmodernity as a response to the "loss of referentiality" pluralized
identity question that is "the power of searching for self." Opening a historical and existential question: "How to reconcile national, state and cultural affiliation?", and "How to build a historically authentic identity that reduced the concept of integrative catholic croatianhood to patriotic fiction of type "since the seventh century," "God and Croats" and "Croatia to the Drina"?, Academician Lovrenovic mentioned the example of European experience that could be of help: "The unification of Italy was accompanied by the Italian official

Massimo d'Azeglio’s sentence: 'We created Italy, and now we must create Italians', which applies equally to European Union of today: 'We have created the European Union, now we have to create Europeans'. Can a similar formula be applied to B&H: "We have created a Bosnia and Herzegovina, now we have to create (political) Bosnians?" is also one of important questions opened by professor Lovrenovic.
A lecture Silence in a large group in Bosnia and Herzegovina through history was held by professor Alija Sutovic, presenting the case of a young man from Srebrenica, who being a 17-year old boy in July 1995 survived the shooting and genocide and who, a few years later, during the testimony in The Hague stopped talking and numbed for days, which was the reason that he underwent a treatment in analytic group. Prof. Sutovic spoke about the concept of silence and a "group", the character and meaning of silence from the psychodynamic point of view, its impact on the development of group dynamics and the emotional communication of nonverbal character in small and large group, focusing on the collective in a large group (society, nation, transnational groups).
In his speech, Sutovic also referred to the B&H as "a space in which a consensus on important historical issues is lacking" that as such "is being filled with silence," which provides a fruitful soil for an "upsurge" of emotions (hatred, fear, desire for revenge, shame, guilt, humiliation) and the development of myths.
In the second panel on Trauma, genocide and gender, Dr. Nermina Kravic presented her paper on the Genocide and Youth of Srebrenica: the second generation of victims, which focused  on the impact of traumatic experiences from early childhood in children who survived the genocide in Srebrenica on their personality development and mental health in adolescence, while Prof. Hariz Halilovic, in his lecture No country for old memories: War widows and fatherless families in the Bosnian diaspora in the aftermath of genocide, from the perspective of social anthropology spoke about some aspects of gender-based displacement after the experience of genocide and the burden of war consequences carried out by women/widows, whose husbands did not survive genocide.
Assistant professor Edisa Gazetic spoke on Traumatic upbringing in conservative cultures: can patriarchal mothers raise an open-minded daughters?, in which she pointed out that relationships in patriarchal cultures are constructed in the way that most of a kinship relations are colored with the concepts, such as: silence, guilt, punishment, a denial of freedom of choice. Gazetic cited that the lives of the sons, and particularly of daughters, are marked with abusive upbringing, and therefore it is not surprising that in a culture or in literature, a death - suicide appeared as the only resistance to rigid rules. She concluded that it is paradoxical that in this way the daughters resolved their conflicts with parents and that a death is often the only

mirror of their free will.
Aiming at better understanding the relationship between conflict, psychosocial trauma, its consequences and cultural memories from the perspective of oral history, Patrick McCarthy, Amra Delic and Branka Antic Stauber presented the book After the Fall: Srebrenica survivors in St. Louis, written by Patrick McCarthy, Tom Maday and David Rohde. This valuable book reflects the chronology of events during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in early 1990s, the events prior to and after the fall of Srebrenica, representing also a “collective witness”, which through interview narratives and impressive photographs document and convey the stories and memories of survivors of the most brutal and shameful crime after the World War Second that took place in so-called “UN safe area”.  After the Fall tells all dimensions of Srebrenica's tragedy and the life after of one extended Bosnian family that survived the genocide.
In the following set of event, Patrick McCarthy delivered a lecture A Home Far from Home: The Bosnian Community in St. Louis, where he spoke about marginalized communities and their problems with integration, and the efforts that have been made in St. Louis to help the Bosnian community in its social integration and the preservation of cultural identity. Dr. Branka Antic Stauber presented the Flower Valley: occupational therapy as a model of coping and psychosocial recovery of women survivors of Srebrenica, stressing the importance of rehabilitation and social inclusion of war traumatized persons.
Prof. Damir Arsenijevic presented the Working Group “Joke, War, Genocide”, whose aim is to explore jokes as speech about war and genocide through collective work and to understand better the mechanisms of such speech and the effect it produces in society.  Jokes, as speech about war and genocide, are posited and explored as a specific form of witnessing, while the analysis of such jokes is focused on the unconscious influences that dominate our speech and language.
Prof. Jasmin Husanovic in her presentation entitled Against trauma management through the policy of terror: a new solidarity in cultural production, the production of knowledge and social activism, from the perspective of critical pedagogy, focused on the analysis of the problems related to the modeling of memory through a culture of trauma and current production of knowledge within universities, criticizing the identity politics and affirming the importance of collaborative emancipatory praxis in the triangle of art, theory and activism. As an imperative, Prof. Husanovic cited the opening of classrooms in the community with the aim of producing new knowledge.
In his lecture on Culture of oblivion or memories: a change of identity of the city of Banja Luka, Srdjan Susnica tried to shed light on the processes of violent cultural-ethnic "cleansing" of public space by “deleting” narratives from cultural memory, development of a culture of remembrance based on

forgetfulness and the politics of culturecide which is still ongoing.
Rade Radovanovic, in his speech entitled Are monsters suffering from nightmares?, emphasized that: “’A great history’ - even when it is not dictated by the interests of the ‘winners’ - often conceals or covers human good and evil. It does not register or suppress specific victims and executioners, the heroes and criminals, leaving them to the ‘conspiracy of silence.’”
Assistant professor Enes Osmancevic spoke on the Speech of Hatred in online media in B&H, pointing to one of the biggest problems of public communication, particularly driven by the possibilities of anonymous communication and interaction on the Internet. Osmancevic analyzed different conceptions of hatred speech, recalled the escalation of hatred speech during 90s in the media of the former Yugoslavia, and cited examples of hatred speech in online media in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with reference to some of the possibilities of combating discriminatory and hatred speech.
In memory of the victims of genocide, during the second day of Interdisciplinary Classroom the session of transitional justice Facing the Past - Transforming the future was held in Potocari Memorial, where the participants attended a history class, watched a documentary about Srebrenica genocide and paid tribute to the victims. In order to recognize the importance of group psychodynamics and to understand better the group identity, roots and consequences of social trauma, participants took part in the large group, during which they had the opportunity to share their own feelings and experiences from recent war in the region.  In the final part of the program the group talked to "women of Srebrenica" about their war trauma, losses and the lives in the aftermath of genocide and transition.
In her closing remarks, Dr. Amra Delic cited the concept of “chosen trauma”, the process and the need to psychologize and mythologize chosen traumatic event by a large group, inter- and trans-generational transmission of the emotions related to trauma, the resulting psychological tasks and responsibility for future generation. It was concluded that the completion of uncompleted psychological processes and constructive facing the past through the deconstructions of myths and “historiography wars” that are still present in the region, learning from historical mistakes, empathizing with the victims and dialogue, represent the only correct path  that leads to collective healing, rebuilding the trust and reconciliation.
In order to prevent revenge-seeking, new conflicts and collective violence, a continuation of interdisciplinary and multinational collaboration and cooperation is planned within the TPO Program for Interdisciplinary Learning and Research as one of the platforms that should contribute to further reconstruction and peacebuilding.