Author Archives: Laura Major

About Laura Major

Laura Major is a Career Development Fellow in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. She is currently writing publications based on her doctorate, which was completed at the University of Edinburgh with funding from the Economic Social and Research Council (UK Research and Innovation). Her research and teaching are located in both political and medical anthropology, as well as studies of material culture.

Spectres of Death: Exhuming the Human Remains of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda

This post is part of a series on politics in the face of death. For an introduction and links to the other posts, please see here. In the mid-1990s an extremist political faction within the Hutu-dominated Rwandan government successfully mobilised a large militia and many ordinary citizens in the organised extermination of Rwandans identified as ethnic Tutsi, as well as Hutu who resisted the regime’s genocidal intention. Few escaped, with Rwandans of both determined and ambiguous ethnic identity and political affiliation drawn into the conflict. Continue reading →