Zoe Vorwald
Research Mentor: Rebecca Rose
Mentor Department: Political Science, LSA
Author(s): Rebecca Rose
Session: Session 6 (3:00 PM – 3:50 PM)
Presentation Type: Poster 120
Abstract
This research project asks when and how do state actors memorialize armed conflict? To build a cohesive dataset, I compiled a list of conflicts organized by “Conflict ID’s†and then analyzed different factors. The research conducted focuses specifically on physical structure memorials such as monuments, museums, and exhibits, using different sources of online documentation like government sites, NGO reports such as Amnesty International, and even personal travel sites to track where such memorials exist, who constructs and funds them, and how they represent the conflict. The findings from this research have shown a clear imbalance in the global memorialization process. States that intervened with military troops or found the conflict to be on their own land are much more likely to establish physical structures in remembrance. Additionally, large conflicts that involved multiple countries sending aid and troops to one actor or government often tend to integrate many different small memorials or notices into one large memorial of all peacekeeping efforts over the course of many years. By noting both the presence and absence of such memorials for various conflicts spanning the entire globe, this research contributes to the study of how states remember conflicts and how these memorials function as a power of the state, and eventually can be used in broader behavioral studies, and even post-conflict politics.
