Grandmothers rarely appear in political theory. When they do, they are usually cast as marginal figures - ritual mourners, symbolic ancestors, caretakers or care-receivers - rather than as political subjects. Yet across societies grandmothers often remain when others migrate, sustain households through the labour of care, and transmit memories that link past struggles with present political life. This project asks what becomes visible when grandmothers are placed at the centre of political analysis.
Drawing on ethnographic research in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, the project begins from a striking observation: grandmothers frequently appear as distinctive figures of kinship—often more lenient toward younger generations, yet outspoken, humorous and irreverent. Their stories of everyday defiance—mocking occupying soldiers, ridiculing authority or sustaining communities through humour and care—introduce tonalities that complicate the stark moral binaries through which conflict is often narrated.
The project develops the concept of the politics of grandmothers through three interconnected aims: advancing research on Druze grandmothers in the Golan Heights; initiating new interviews with “protest grandmothers” in the United Kingdom; and convening a small interdisciplinary network of scholars and artists.
Extending an ongoing dialogue between anthropology and performance, the project will bring theatre artist Lekaa Sharaf to the United Kingdom to present her play Ancestral Rage (2025), based on interviews with women from the Golan. The collaboration builds on Kastrinou’s earlier work with choreographer Johannes Birringer in The Price of Water, which translated ethnographic research into experimental theatre. Together these materials offer a new analytical lens on how kinship, humour and care sustain political life across generations.
A two-day workshop at Brunel University London will bring together scholars, artists and participating grandmothers to collectively reflect on these materials and explore how grandmotherhood shapes political experience across generations.