ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Forensic Scientists and Recovering the Disappeared: Origins, Travel, and Production of Knowledge

• In Event: Forensic Science in Transtemporal Perspective

English Abstract

This paper draws on the findings of an Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded project, namely, Forensic Scientists and Knowledge Production in Transitional Justice. It examines the emergence and development of forensic expertise in efforts to locate, recover and identify the remains of those disappeared in periods of conflict or dictatorship. Based on a literature review and empirical data collected in a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with forensic scientists who have worked in Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia, this paper explores three aspects of the relationship between forensic scientists and knowledge production in transitional justice contexts. First, it will consider the earliest applications of forensic expertise to cases of enforced disappearance in post-dictatorship Argentina in the 1980s. Second, it will examine the ways in which this knowledge has travelled, including the importance for forensic experts of building local capacity in diverse contexts with differing levels of expertise and resources. Third, it will explore what we can learn from this about the dynamics of knowledge production in transitional justice as a field. The work of forensic scientists complicates the narrative that transitional justice scholarship and practice are dominated by the global north, in terms of both the key role played by Latin America, and the ways in which forensic experts have engaged with different knowledges – including local cultural practices – in the performance of their work.

Author

• Lauren Dempster