One of the first researchers to examine USC Shoah Foundation’s new Rwandan Tutsi Genocide collection is Samantha Lakin, a former Fulbright scholar and master’s candidate at Tufts University.

Lakin is studying transitional justice, human rights and humanitarian aid, and global politics in the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts. She spent the past week at the USC Shoah Foundation office conducting research in the Visual History Archive for her master’s thesis about genocide memorialization in Rwanda. She previously spent three months conducting research at Kigali Genocide Memorial Center in Rwanda.

Lakin said she drew on her experience as a Fulbright scholar in Switzerland, interviewing Holocaust survivors who had been sent to Switzerland as children to escape the war, when deciding what to research for her thesis.

“The thing that compelled me about [my time in Switzerland] was working with survivors and getting to document their stories, especially stories that hadn’t been told all that often and hadn’t been heard before,” Lakin said. “Even though some of them were tough to hear, they had a form of inspiration built into them because all these people survived.”

For her research into memorialization of genocide in Rwanda, Lakin is watching testimonies that address the various ways in which the genocide is commemorated and how survivors feel about different aspects of remembrance, including memorials and burial. Lakin said the testimonies have shown her how important burial and reburial is for Rwandan survivors.

“People feel somewhat redeemed and that they’re doing the honorable and respectful thing, and they’re very engaged in this act of being able to respectfully bury their loved ones,” she said.

She also said it’s important that survivors be consulted on what they want from memorials so these places of commemoration are meaningful, respectful and useful.

The Visual History Archive allows Lakin and other researchers to watch survivor testimony without traveling around the world to interview them in person, which can be expensive and difficult to organize, Lakin said. She can take what she’s learned from the testimonies back out into the field and use them to inform her future studies.

Spending the week at the Shoah Foundation watching testimonies has been a valuable time to concentrate on her research and collaborate with Shoah Foundation staff to delve deeply into the issues she’s interested in, she added.

“This week I’ve really gotten to sit down with the testimonies, engage with them and say ‘I’m dedicating a full week to engaging in this subject,’” Lakin said. “Listening to the testimonies and learning from them has been really important to me.”