Julia Viebach

Julia Viebach

Senior Lecturer in the School for Social Policy Studies at University of Bristol

Areas of expertise

Transitional Justice  /  Mass Violence  /  Trauma  /  Memory  /  Archives

Dr Julia Viebach is a Senior Lecturer in the School for Social Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. She researches violence, memory and transitional justice with a focus on post-genocide Rwanda and more recently South Africa.

Previously, Julia spent more than eight years (2013-2021) at the University of Oxford both at the Faculty of Law and the African Studies Centre where she taught on the MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice and the MSc in African Studies.

She is the curator of the award-winning photographic exhibition Kwibuka Rwanda and case display Traces of the Past at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum. She has published widely on transitional justice, memorialisation and human rights archives including two edited books.

Julia has worked as a consultant on transitional justice and memory for various development aid organizations and German government bodies.

She holds a PhD in peace and conflict studies from the Centre for Conflict Studies, University of Marburg.

Taught Courses

Friendship bands around a mass grave marker.  Killing Fields, outside Phnom Penh. Master in transitional justice - Course

Violence, Memory and Transitional Justice

There has been a rush to commemorate human rights abuses globally, often referred to as memorialization. This course aims to critically examine these initiatives undertaken by international, state and civil society actors.

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Publications

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Transitional Archives: Toward a Conceptualisation of Archives in Transitional Justice

2021

Julia Viebach, Dagmar Hovestädt, Ulrike Lühe

Beyond Evidence – The Use of Archives in Transitional’, International Journal of Human Rights 25(3): 403-439.

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Mediating “Presence-Absence” at Rwanda’s Genocide Memorials: Of Care-taking, Memory and Proximity to the Dead

2020

Julia Viebach

Critical African Studies 12(2): 237-269

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Of Other Times: Temporality, Memory and Trauma in Post-Genocide Rwanda

March 2019

Julia Viebach

International Review of Victimology 25(3): 1-25

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The Evidence That Cannot Be Heard: Reading Trauma into and Testimony against the Witness Stand at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

March 2017

Julia Viebach

International Journal of Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 6(1): 51-72

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