Anthropological Methods for Documenting Human Rights Violations and Genocide

September 15, 2015 at 4:00 PM Pacific Time

A public lecture by Victoria Sanford (Professor and Chair of Anthropology, Founding Director of the Center for Human Rights and Peace Studies at Lehman College, the Graduate Center, City University of New York)

Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research

Drawing on 25 years of experience investigating human rights violations and genocide in Guatemala, Dr. Sanford will discuss the theory and practice of forensic exhumations, victim identification, archival and testimonial research, and their interplay in legal processes and community desires for justice. She will explore the ways in which science, law, and justice complement and collide with one another as investigations move forward from the field to legal courts and the court of public opinion.

Dr. Victoria Sanford is Professor and Chair of Anthropology and Founding Director of the Center for Human Rights and Peace Studies at Lehman College, the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She holds a doctorate in Anthropology from Stanford University, where she studied International Human Rights Law and Immigration Law at Stanford Law School. She is the author of Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala (2003), Violencia y Genocidio en Guatemala (2003), Guatemala: Del Genocidio al Feminicidio (2009), and co-author of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation’s report on the Commission for Historical Clarification. She is additionally co-editor of The State of Gender and Violence. In August 2012, she served as an invited expert witness on the Guatemalan Genocide before Judge Santiago Pedraz in the Spanish National Court’s international genocide case against the Guatemalan generals.