Thijs Bouwknegt Visiting Fall 2021

Dr. Thijs Bouwknegt is historian of mass violence and transitional justice. He is Researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam (part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, KNAW). At the NIOD he is part of the research group Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Transitional Justice Programme. He also is the coordinator of the MA-programme "Holocaust and Genocide Studies" at the University of Amsterdam (UvA).  

From 2007 to 2012, Bouwknegt was editor and correspondent at the International Justice Tribune and Radio Netherlands Worldwide's International Justice and Africa desks. Between 2004 and 2007 Bouwknegt worked as a researcher at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Amnesty International, investigating mass violence in Rwanda, Darfur (Sudan), Liberia and Sierra Leone. Since 2003, Bouwknegt has attended and monitored over 150 atrocity crime trials at the ICC, international tribunals (for the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia and Lebanon) and jurisdictions in Europe and Africa.  

Bouwknegt specializes in mass violence in Africa, comparative genocide studies, transitional justice and international criminal justice. He has published scholarly and popularizing work on various topics including: mass violence in Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia; transitional justice in Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad, Uganda, Mali, Ethiopia, Syria and Iraq; perpetrators of international crimes; child soldiers; universal jurisdiction; and transitional archives.  

Bouwknegt's current research interests are colonial atrocities and their legacies. At Washington & Lee, Bouwknegt is to further develop ideas on this topic, while also researching transitional justice in the USA and finalizing his forthcoming book "Transitional History", which deals with mass violence and transitional justice in Africa between 1884 and 2020.