Research Presentation

"Grave Politics: Memory and the Work of Post-Conflict Repair"

Dr. Sarah Wagner
Department of Anthropology
University of North Carolina, Greensboro


The lecture will examine how advances in forensic science have affected the work of social reconstruction in post-conflict societies. Dr. Wagner will draw from the example of Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which innovations in DNA testing has helped recover and identify victims of the July 1995 genocide, as well as the US government's efforts at the "fullest possible accounting" of service members missing or killed in action during the wars of the twentieth century.




Dr. Sarah Wagner received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Harvard University in 2006 and also holds an MALD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (2002).  Part political anthropology and science and technology studies, her recent research has focused on the nexus of genetic technology, politics, and society in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her book, To Know Where He Lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica’s Missing (University of California Press, October 2008), examines the DNA-based forensic system developed to identify the over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) men and boys killed in the July 1995 genocide at the UN "safe area" of Srebrenica. Based on extensive ethnographic research conducted from 2003 to 2007, the study analyzes the technology’s sociopolitical import for postwar Bosnia—from surviving families to nationalist political leaders and international representatives—as well as its application beyond the Balkans. In continuing research in eastern Bosnia, she is working on a collaborative project on the aftermath of the Srebrenica genocide that looks at prevailing discourses of nation-building and post-conflict social reconstruction.

Her interest in the application of genetic technology in postmortem identification systems has recently expanded to include the United States and the recovery efforts for missing soldiers. This research addresses how DNA testing used to identify remains of US soldiers killed in the Vietnam War has affected modes of national commemoration, as well as expectations of surviving families and fellow soldiers about the recovery and identification processes.

This lecture is free and open to the public.  For more information, please contact the Department of Anthropology at smithtj2@appstate.edu