Samantha Lakin is a PhD candidate at The Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University, USA. Lakin is currently a Fulbright Scholar in Rwanda for the 2017-2018 academic year. She is most inspired by working with passionate academics, policymakers, public intellectuals, and the strong people living and coping in the aftermath of conflict, atrocities, human rights violations, and genocide. Her current research documents and analyzes local perspectives of memory and transitional justice in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. She has held contracts in Lubumbashi, DRC, Burundi, Northern Uganda, Nigeria, and throughout the Great Lakes Region of Africa, although Rwanda remains her main field site.
Lakin’s research focuses on access to justice in post-conflict settings, with specific knowledge and experience working in Rwanda and the Great Lakes Region of Africa. Her journey began as a Fulbright scholar to Switzerland in 2011-2012, where she researched the clandestine rescue of Jewish children to Switzerland during WWII, to escape Nazi persecution. Conducting oral history testimonies with 70 survivors of the Holocaust showed her what is possible when asking questions of past history and memory.