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Student Opportunities

We are committed to fostering an inclusive and rich environment where students will strive intellectually and professionally. Using mentoring strategies, students will use the principles learned inside their classrooms and expand them to see their real-life impacts by engaging with scholars, practitioners, activists, and survivors of mass atrocities. The MARI has opportunities for undergraduates and graduate level students to engage and actively contribute to the design and execution of many of the projects in the initiative as well as potentially collaborate in the publications. 

Student Projects

During the 2024–2025 academic year, MARI’s first two projects, to which students can contribute, include the Mass Atrocity Accountability Project (MAAP) and the United States Atrocities Accountability Project (USAAP).

The Mass Atrocity Accountability Project (led by Professor Claudine Kuradusenge-McLeod)

MAAP will take on two different tasks: 1) create the database of studied/recognized/ ignored mass atrocities, and 2) gather narratives for the conflicts in Africa's Great Lakes Region (Democratic Republic of Congo – Rwanda – Burundi). Selected students will develop and build multi-layer data based on mass atrocities committed, clarifying them based on their level of recognition or attention received, their human and social impacts, and their geopolitical and legal ramifications. The second project will enable us to study mass violence and its impacts on people’s narratives of survival, trauma, and identity. This project, focusing on Africa's Great Lakes Region in its first year, will bring forth a more critical analysis of mass atrocities and shed light on the discourses of violence that influenced the making of violence and are then embodied by those who lived the violence.

United States Atrocities Accountability Project (led by Professor Jeff Bachman)

USAAP will focus on atrocities committed in two ongoing conflicts for which the United States has provided material and political support: the Saudi-led coalition’s atrocities in Yemen and Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. Selected students will help develop and build a spreadsheet database that documents: 1) atrocities committed in Yemen from March 2015 to present and Gaza from October 2023 to present, using media reports, NGO reports, and UN reports; 2) U.S. weapons sold and provided as aid to Saudi-led coalition members and Israel during these same time periods; (3) confirmed atrocities committed using U.S. weapons; and (4) U.S. political support through statements delivered by administration officials (president, State Department, etc.) and participation in United Nations discussions/votes.

Undergraduate Course Offerings

There is power in the words we use to talk about ourselves and our struggles. The stories we form—to make sense of our past, present, and future—are a reflection of our identities and consciousness. Following interpretive-relational work, this course explores the ways in which we, individuals and a collective, construct and transmit knowledge. Students learn to use narrative analysis and phenomenological analysis to understand the impact of stories on marginalized communities. The course also covers moral and ethical considerations while conducting research, how to organize and protect confidential information, and how the researchers reflect and process the emotional and psychological responsibilities of researching difficult topics. From identifying a feasible research question to writing their analysis of the data collected, students are guided through the process of conducting independent research. Students produce an independent, scholarly project, consisting of an original research paper and presentation.

In this course, students assess the ways in which international politics influenced the evolution of the provisions, obligations, and prohibitions included in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention), as well as the impacts of these changes on the prevention and punishment of genocide. Students also consider how subsequent international legal and normative developments, such as the International Court of Justice's advisory opinion concerning treaty reservations and the emergence of the responsibility to protect, have either reinforced or chipped away at deficiencies negotiated into the text of the Genocide Convention. Moreover, students consider whether genocide ought to maintain its position as the crime of crimes, which situates genocide at the top of a hierarchy of international crimes and associated human suffering, or whether such positioning unnecessarily detracts from other forms of suffering caused by aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Designed as a comparative and interdisciplinary inquiry, this course looks at the ways historical context, political realities, and cultural components enable ethnic cleansing and genocide to happen. Cases studied include the Herero genocide, the Armenian genocide, the Rape of Nanking Massacre, the Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Sudan genocide.

In this seminar-based course, students will study “forgotten” cases of genocide other mass atrocities, organized around four themes: imperialism, war, state repression and military dictatorships, and human-caused famine and attrition. Students will consider why these thematic areas contribute to cases being “forgotten” and explore the spaces in which the cases they study are forgotten and, also, remembered. In addition to discussing preplanned cases that span the four thematic areas, students will investigate cases of their choice in each of the four areas and complete a final research project.

This discussion-based course explores the movement of historical justice and the social and political context that birthed it. Comparative and interdisciplinary, the course uses case studies and focuses on the nexus between the human rights discourse, historical memory, and memory politics as the grounds for examining the future of human rights. On a fundamental level, the course looks at the ways past wrongs and historical justice have been socially, politically, and legally conceptualized and redressed. The course concludes with a look at the strengths and weaknesses of the historical justice movement.

Graduate Course Offerings

This course explores the intersection of identity, citizenship, and power through a transnational lens. Students understand the connections between group identity, human actions, and political participation using transnationalism, which is defined as the actions, processes, and institutions that transcend nation-states to become networks of human experiences, as well as the study of diaspora and diasporic consciousness. Ranging from exploration of the complex dynamics of human mobility through investigating the social, psychological, and political impacts of relocation, to looking at the legal challenges of displacement and the notion of citizenship, the course focuses on understanding the challenges our current system is experiencing due to conflicts. The course addresses the concept of diaspora as a starting point to understand how immigrant communities contribute to the creation and or the resolution of conflicts.

In this course students critically approach political and legal questions around the study of genocide. They follow the evolution of the Genocide Convention from its conception to its original draft, and to its adopted text. Students perform case studies and consider whether treatment of the Armenians amounted to genocide and whether the Holocaust was unique. Further, students determine whether the Responsibility to Protect removes the blind spots found in the Genocide Convention and analyze the potential roles the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court can play in deterring state-sponsored genocide.

In this course students critically approach political and legal questions around the study of genocide. They follow the evolution of the Genocide Convention from its conception to its original draft, and to its adopted text. Students perform case studies and consider whether treatment of the Armenians amounted to genocide and whether the Holocaust was unique. Further, students determine whether the Responsibility to Protect removes the blind spots found in the Genocide Convention and analyze the potential roles the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court can play in deterring state-sponsored genocide.

Students in this practicum will conduct research into human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law. Particular topics may include atrocities; genocide; armed conflict; and refugees and internally displaced peoples.