The department is proud to congratulate Ms. Gertz on her 2nd place finish in the Edward F. Hayes' Graduate Research Forum hosted by the Council of Graduate Students.  Her research focused on how siblings influence types of violence committed during the genocide in Rwanda.

Abstract

Samantha Power, US ambassador to the UN, designated the 20th century “the age of genocide.” Since 1945, nearly 50 such events have occurred, causing more deaths than all internal and international wars combined. Small-scale, interview-based studies indicate that intimate kinship ties affect the dynamics of perpetrators’ participation. Yet, to date no systematic research has assessed the extent of familial ties among genocide perpetrators and whether these ties structure particular types of offenses. This research addresses this lacuna, utilizing the largest database of genocide perpetrators in history to investigate how siblings contribute to perpetrators’ violence during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.