Bridget Conley publications
Books
Books
Memory from the Margins: Ethiopia’s Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum
by Bridget Conley (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
This book asks the question: what is the role of memory during a political transition? Drawing on Ethiopian history, transitional justice, and scholarly fields concerned with memory, museums and trauma, the author reveals a complex picture of global, transnational, national and local forces as they converge in the story of the creation and continued life of one modest museum in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa—the Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum. It is a study from multiple margins: neither the case of Ethiopia nor memorialization is central to transitional justice discourse, and within Ethiopia, the history of the Red Terror is sidelined in contemporary politics. From these nested margins, traumatic memory emerges as an ambiguous social and political force. The contributions, meaning and limitations of memory emerge at the point of discrete interactions between memory advocates, survivor-docents and visitors. Memory from the margins is revealed as powerful for how it disrupts, not builds, new forms of community.
How Mass Atrocities End: Studies from Guatemala, Burundi, Indonesia, the Sudans, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Iraq. (“Introduction” and “Bosnia-Herzegovina: Endings Real and Imagined”)
Edited by Bridget Conley-Zilkic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016)
Given the brutality of mass atrocities, it is no wonder that one question dominates research and policy: what can we, who are not at risk, do to prevent such violence and hasten endings? But this question skips a more fundamental question for understanding the trajectory of violence: how do mass atrocities actually end? This volume presents an analysis of the processes, decisions, and factors that help bring about the end of mass atrocities. It includes qualitatively rich case studies from Burundi, Guatemala, Indonesia, Sudan, Bosnia, and Iraq, drawing patterns from wide-ranging data. As such, it offers a much needed correction to the popular ‘salvation narrative’ framing mass atrocity in terms of good and evil. The nuanced, multidisciplinary approach followed here represents not only an essential tool for scholars, but an important step forward in improving civilian protection.
Book Chapters
“Triptych: Seeing Children Born of Wartime Rape” in Challenging Conceptions: Children Born of Wartime Rape and Sexual Exploitation (eds) Kimberly Theidon and Dyan Mazurana. (Rutgers University Press, 2019 forthcoming)
Conley, Bridget. 2019. “Memorial museums at the intersection of politics, exhibition and trauma: A study of the Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum” in Museums and Activism ed. Robert R. Janes and Richard Sandell. London: Routledge.
“From Memory To Action: How a Holocaust Museum Works to Prevent Genocide.”Museums Fighting for Human Rights, ed. Greg Chamberlain (England and Wales: Museum-ID, 2011).
Reports & Papers
Forgotten Victims?:Women and COVID-19 Behind Bars
Amaia Elorza Arregi, Bridget Conley, Matthew Siegel, and Arlyss Herzig
November 2020
COVID-19 and the policies designed to counter it in American prisons pose distinct medical, emotional, psychological, and economic threats for incarcerated women and their families. Drawing on analysis of 138 women’s state and federal prisons across the United States, coupled with review of research on women’s prisons, and detailed profiles of the hardest hit facilities with insights from the women incarcerated inside them, this paper provides unique insight on the impacts of COVID-19 behind bars
96 Deaths in Detention: A View of COVID-19 in the Federal Bureau of Prisons as Captured in Death Notices
Bridget Conley and Matthew Siegel
August 26, 2020
This paper is part of the WPF program on COVID-19 in American prisons, Detentionville. It reflects the concern that the possibilities for advancing peace globally are tied to the protection of the most vulnerable civilian populations. While our previous work has focused on threats of systematic violence against civilians, often in the context of armed conflict or political repression, the Detentionville project asserts that protection must be conceptualized as a globally integrated practice, whereby domestic and foreign policy exist along a continuum. In the context of American mass incarceration, long-standing, systemic injustices that devalue the lives of the disproportionately incarcerated Black and poor people, have now combined with an acute threat to their lives and health: COVID-19.
“Preventing and Respond to Mass Atrocities: Insights for the African Union“
World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School, African Politics, African Peace Research Briefing Paper, June 2016.
“Clashing Measures of Legitimacy in African Security Sector Reform: Implications for Efforts to Protect Civilians” Human Security Institute at The Fletcher School, Occasional Paper, June 2016, 1:3.
with Saskia Brechenmacher and Aditya Sarkar. “Assessing the anti-Atrocity Toolbox” World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School, Occasional Paper, February 2016.
“What Barbed Wire Can’t Enclose”, Alphabet City 7: Social Insecurity (Toronto), Sept. 2000.
Articles & Op-Eds
Conley, Bridget. “Slippage: Bones, intentions, and the construction of memorial meaning” Violence: An international journal, 1–19, 2021
Conley, Bridget with Alex de Waal. “The Purposes of Starvation: Historical and Contemporary Uses” Journal of International Criminal Justice, Volume 17, Issue 4, September 2019, Pages 699–722, https://doi.org/10.1093/jicj/mqz054
“The Politics of Protection’: Assessing the African Union’s Contributions to Reducing Violence Against Civilians” International Peacekeeping 24:2, 566 – 589, 2017.
“What Counts at the End Questioning Consensus in the Construction of Mass Atrocity Narratives” Global Responsibility to Protect 9:1, 15 – 37, 2017.
with Alex de Waal.“Setting the Agenda for Evidence-based Research on Ending Mass Atrocities.” Journal of Genocide Research, Volume 16 Issue 1: 55-76, 2014
with de Waal, Alex. “What Sir William Would do in Syria.” The New York Times. September 5, 2013
with de Waal Alex, and Jens Meierhenrich. 2012. “How Mass Atrocities End: An Evidence Based Counter Narrative.” Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Vo.l 35:3 (Winter 2011)
with David Small. “From Memory To Action: Engaging Visitors in a Holocaust Museum.”Interpretation: Journal of the Association for Heritage Interpretation (2011)
“For Chechnya’s Women, Hope Dies Last,” Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 3 No. 3, 2004.
Interviews & Lectures
Andy Heintz Interview with Bridget Conley, “Oversimplifying Conflicts Doesn’t Help Protect Civilians”, Foreign Policy in Focus, March 1, 2018
Exhibitions and Multimedia Productions
Host, Voices on Genocide Prevention, monthly online audio interview program (January 2008 – August 2011).
Curator, From Memory To Action: Meeting the Challenge of Genocide Today, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (open 2009 – 2014).
Producer, multimedia presentation, Our Walls Bear Witness, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (November 20 – 27, 2006)
Producer, “Defying Genocide” (15 mins., U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Committee on Conscience, 2006).
Curator, Abandoned At Srebrenica: Ten Years Later, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, (July 2005).
Producer and Director, “Darfur Eyewitness” (10 mins., U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Committee on Conscience, 2005).
Books
Memory from the Margins: Ethiopia’s Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum
by Bridget Conley (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
This book asks the question: what is the role of memory during a political transition? Drawing on Ethiopian history, transitional justice, and scholarly fields concerned with memory, museums and trauma, the author reveals a complex picture of global, transnational, national and local forces as they converge in the story of the creation and continued life of one modest museum in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa—the Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum. It is a study from multiple margins: neither the case of Ethiopia nor memorialization is central to transitional justice discourse, and within Ethiopia, the history of the Red Terror is sidelined in contemporary politics. From these nested margins, traumatic memory emerges as an ambiguous social and political force. The contributions, meaning and limitations of memory emerge at the point of discrete interactions between memory advocates, survivor-docents and visitors. Memory from the margins is revealed as powerful for how it disrupts, not builds, new forms of community.
How Mass Atrocities End: Studies from Guatemala, Burundi, Indonesia, the Sudans, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Iraq. (“Introduction” and “Bosnia-Herzegovina: Endings Real and Imagined”)
Edited by Bridget Conley-Zilkic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016)
Given the brutality of mass atrocities, it is no wonder that one question dominates research and policy: what can we, who are not at risk, do to prevent such violence and hasten endings? But this question skips a more fundamental question for understanding the trajectory of violence: how do mass atrocities actually end? This volume presents an analysis of the processes, decisions, and factors that help bring about the end of mass atrocities. It includes qualitatively rich case studies from Burundi, Guatemala, Indonesia, Sudan, Bosnia, and Iraq, drawing patterns from wide-ranging data. As such, it offers a much needed correction to the popular ‘salvation narrative’ framing mass atrocity in terms of good and evil. The nuanced, multidisciplinary approach followed here represents not only an essential tool for scholars, but an important step forward in improving civilian protection.
“Triptych: Seeing Children Born of Wartime Rape” in Challenging Conceptions: Children Born of Wartime Rape and Sexual Exploitation (eds) Kimberly Theidon and Dyan Mazurana. (Rutgers University Press, 2019 forthcoming)
Conley, Bridget. 2019. “Memorial museums at the intersection of politics, exhibition and trauma: A study of the Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum” in Museums and Activism ed. Robert R. Janes and Richard Sandell. London: Routledge.
“From Memory To Action: How a Holocaust Museum Works to Prevent Genocide.”Museums Fighting for Human Rights, ed. Greg Chamberlain (England and Wales: Museum-ID, 2011).
Forgotten Victims?:Women and COVID-19 Behind Bars
Amaia Elorza Arregi, Bridget Conley, Matthew Siegel, and Arlyss Herzig
November 2020
COVID-19 and the policies designed to counter it in American prisons pose distinct medical, emotional, psychological, and economic threats for incarcerated women and their families. Drawing on analysis of 138 women’s state and federal prisons across the United States, coupled with review of research on women’s prisons, and detailed profiles of the hardest hit facilities with insights from the women incarcerated inside them, this paper provides unique insight on the impacts of COVID-19 behind bars
96 Deaths in Detention: A View of COVID-19 in the Federal Bureau of Prisons as Captured in Death Notices
Bridget Conley and Matthew Siegel
August 26, 2020
This paper is part of the WPF program on COVID-19 in American prisons, Detentionville. It reflects the concern that the possibilities for advancing peace globally are tied to the protection of the most vulnerable civilian populations. While our previous work has focused on threats of systematic violence against civilians, often in the context of armed conflict or political repression, the Detentionville project asserts that protection must be conceptualized as a globally integrated practice, whereby domestic and foreign policy exist along a continuum. In the context of American mass incarceration, long-standing, systemic injustices that devalue the lives of the disproportionately incarcerated Black and poor people, have now combined with an acute threat to their lives and health: COVID-19.
“Preventing and Respond to Mass Atrocities: Insights for the African Union“
World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School, African Politics, African Peace Research Briefing Paper, June 2016.
“Clashing Measures of Legitimacy in African Security Sector Reform: Implications for Efforts to Protect Civilians” Human Security Institute at The Fletcher School, Occasional Paper, June 2016, 1:3.
with Saskia Brechenmacher and Aditya Sarkar. “Assessing the anti-Atrocity Toolbox” World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School, Occasional Paper, February 2016.
“What Barbed Wire Can’t Enclose”, Alphabet City 7: Social Insecurity (Toronto), Sept. 2000.
Conley, Bridget. “Slippage: Bones, intentions, and the construction of memorial meaning” Violence: An international journal, 1–19, 2021
Conley, Bridget with Alex de Waal. “The Purposes of Starvation: Historical and Contemporary Uses” Journal of International Criminal Justice, Volume 17, Issue 4, September 2019, Pages 699–722, https://doi.org/10.1093/jicj/mqz054
“The Politics of Protection’: Assessing the African Union’s Contributions to Reducing Violence Against Civilians” International Peacekeeping 24:2, 566 – 589, 2017.
“What Counts at the End Questioning Consensus in the Construction of Mass Atrocity Narratives” Global Responsibility to Protect 9:1, 15 – 37, 2017.
with Alex de Waal.“Setting the Agenda for Evidence-based Research on Ending Mass Atrocities.” Journal of Genocide Research, Volume 16 Issue 1: 55-76, 2014
with de Waal, Alex. “What Sir William Would do in Syria.” The New York Times. September 5, 2013
with de Waal Alex, and Jens Meierhenrich. 2012. “How Mass Atrocities End: An Evidence Based Counter Narrative.” Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Vo.l 35:3 (Winter 2011)
with David Small. “From Memory To Action: Engaging Visitors in a Holocaust Museum.”Interpretation: Journal of the Association for Heritage Interpretation (2011)
“For Chechnya’s Women, Hope Dies Last,” Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 3 No. 3, 2004.
Andy Heintz Interview with Bridget Conley, “Oversimplifying Conflicts Doesn’t Help Protect Civilians”, Foreign Policy in Focus, March 1, 2018
Host, Voices on Genocide Prevention, monthly online audio interview program (January 2008 – August 2011).
Curator, From Memory To Action: Meeting the Challenge of Genocide Today, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (open 2009 – 2014).
Producer, multimedia presentation, Our Walls Bear Witness, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (November 20 – 27, 2006)
Producer, “Defying Genocide” (15 mins., U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Committee on Conscience, 2006).
Curator, Abandoned At Srebrenica: Ten Years Later, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, (July 2005).
Producer and Director, “Darfur Eyewitness” (10 mins., U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Committee on Conscience, 2005).
Spotlight
Memory from the Margins: Ethiopia’s Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum by Bridget Conley (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019)
This book asks the question: what is the role of memory during a political transition? Drawing on Ethiopian history, transitional justice, and scholarly fields concerned with memory, museums and trauma, the author reveals a complex picture of global, transnational, national and local forces as they converge in the story of the creation and continued life of one modest museum in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa—the Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum. It is a study from multiple margins: neither the case of Ethiopia nor memorialization is central to transitional justice discourse, and within Ethiopia, the history of the Red Terror is sidelined in contemporary politics. From these nested margins, traumatic memory emerges as an ambiguous social and political force. The contributions, meaning and limitations of memory emerge at the point of discrete interactions between memory advocates, survivor-docents and visitors. Memory from the margins is revealed as powerful for how it disrupts, not builds, new forms of community.