Societies transitioning from conflict and/or authoritarianism have increasingly built Transitional Justice (TJ) museums to explore their legacies of violence and repression, and to contribute to a culture of democracy, pluralism, and societal reconciliation. However, until recently, the impact of such museums had been assumed and not rigorously evaluated. This talk will be presenting results of three different experimental studies conducted in TJ museums/exhibits around the world: the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile (with Valeria Palanza and Elsa Voytas), the "Troubles and Beyond" exhibit in the Ulster Museum in Belfast, Northern Ireland (with Elsa Voytas), and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC (with Francesca Parente and Ethan vanderWilden). The talk will offer comparative lessons from these three studies. In addition, it will present evidence from a recently built TJ museum database (with vanderWilden and Voytas) with the goal to examine macro-level patterns of post-conflict memorialistic initiatives around the world.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Laia Balcells is the Christopher F. Gallagher Family Professor of Government at Georgetown University, where she is also core faculty of the M.A. in Conflict Resolution, and a faculty affiliate of Gui2de, the BMW Center for German and European Studies, and the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS).

Balcells's research and teaching are at the intersection of comparative politics and international relations. She received my BA (with highest distinction) in Political Science from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona), including a full academic year as an Erasmus student at Sciences Po (Toulouse). Balcells began her graduate studies at the Juan March Institute (Madrid), and earned her Ph.D. from Yale University.

Balcells has been an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University (2012-2017), a Niehaus Visiting Associate Research Scholar at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University (2015-16), and Chair of Excellence at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (2017).

Her first book, Rivalry and Revenge: the Politics of Violence during Civil War, was published in 2017 by Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics). The book  was a runner-up for the Conflict Research Society Book of the Year Award (2018).