ABSTRACT
This is the first of three primarily ‘data-driven’ chapters – predominantly qualitative in-depth interview data – which are written and structured in a way that aims to give maximum voice and space to the narratives of participants from the original study. This chapter specifically maps out some of the major impacts of political violence and terrorism as articulated by survivors themselves. This includes a range of direct impacts on individual survivors, including physical injuries and their manifestation over time, short-term emotional responses such as anger, and the bereavement and grief experienced by those who have lost loved ones. The chapter also documents the indirect impacts experienced by survivors and their families, such as the longer-term emotional responses of fear, anxiety and hypervigilance, lasting consequences for personal relationships, and the challenge of unwanted media attention. While this reads as a stand-alone chapter, it also ‘sets up’ the question of how survivors have negotiated these harms and challenges which is addressed in the chapter that follows this one.
