The project will examine gendered experiences of trauma, marginalization and recovery in militarized settings and protracted conflicts through the case studies of Colombia and Sri Lanka. Research on transitional justice - the processes through which societies address past violence and abuses - has generally focused on formal institutional interventions in cases in which there have been clear transitions from authoritarian rule or violence. Less has been written on how to address the past in highly securitized settings with significant militarization and lingering conflict. Transitional justice literature has also tended to focus on formal institutions over informal and particularly psychosocial healing processes. Integrating trauma theory into transitional justice studies, this project examines the significant effects of militarization and protracted conflict on collective trauma, marginalization and recovery. Although highly securitized environments may curtail or limit public participation and compromise formal transitional justice proceedings, the project contends that long-term militarization may also open new spaces for transitional justice and community recovery efforts. The project looks at militarized contexts as repositories of collective trauma and hidden narratives, which encompass individual experiences and loss. The project's goal is to examine more innovative and unconventional healing and justice processes even with little political space and to assess the contributions that such processes can make alongside more conventional transitional justice mechanisms. It pays attention to voices that are often not heard in transitional justice research, particularly women who participated in or were directly affected by combat, focusing on former cadres, war widows and internally displaced populations. The project advances a multi-method innovative interdisciplinary framework that combines rigorous qualitative interview-based and ethnographic observation with survey research, and supplements the research with visual documentation.