Non-verbal communication, emotions, and tensions in co-production: Reflections on researching memory and social change in Peru and Colombia

This article explores the role of non-verbal communication, emotions and tensions in co-productive research on peace and memory. Drawing on the work of peace and memory activists in early twenty-first century Peru and Colombia and data generated at the Peace Festival encounter, an event organized by the authors in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia in 2017, it addresses the lack of site-specific critical analysis of South American knowledge and experience in the scholarship in these areas. It argues that the work of these groups shows that cultivating non-verbal communication and emotions can foster horizontality within co-productive research spaces, and that when practised in this way, co-productive memory work can generate a community of care and commitment. •Curating encounters around both rational intellectual argument and dialogue around feelings can foster horizontality.•Embracing participants’ own goals and strategies is an inherent creative force.•Once acknowledged, tensions between participants can provide a common focus that helps create an affective community.