Julia Viebach

Source: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/julia-viebach/ Parent: https://www.qub.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/criminology-ba-m900/

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Julia Viebach

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3950-4081

Emailj.viebach@qub.ac.uk

Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

Transitional Justice, International Criminal Justice, Rwanda, South Africa, Mass Atrocity, Human Rights Documentation and Archives, Digitalisation and Datafication of Human Rights Documentation

2009Research output 2009: 1Research output 2012: 1Research output 2013: 2Research output 2014: 1Research output 2015: 1Research output 2016: 2Research output 2017: 1Research output 2018: 3Research output 2019: 2Research output 2020: 1Research output 2021: 2Research output 2022: 3Research output 2023: 3Projects 2024: 1Research output 2025: 12025

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Research Focus

Julia Viebach is a Lecturer in Criminology at Queen's University Belfast. Her research explores transitional justice, mass violence, memorialization, and human rights documentation, driven by the fundamental question: how do societies live together after such a rupture of social bonds and communal life? She explores these themes from an interdisciplinary perspective drawing on socio-legal studies, Southern and Critical Criminology, African and postcolonial studies, and legal anthropology.

Julia's research encompasses two major strands. The first focuses on post-genocide Rwanda, examining how survivors in Rwanda and in the diaspora reconstruct meaning after mass atrocity. Her early work investigated survivors' experiences of trauma and meaning-making through memorial practices, particularly the practice of care-taking—the preservation and care of human remains and dead bodies displayed at genocide memorials. This research revealed how survivors remake their worlds through working with the remnants of their dead loved ones, exploring the connectivities between violence, memory, personhood, place, and human substances. Her current work examines Rwanda's gacaca courts through a decolonial lens, developing the concept of "gacaca judgecraft from a global south perspective." This research challenges Western human rights critiques by foregrounding local legal practices and epistemologies, examining how gacaca operated as both a legal mechanism and a social process of meaning-making in communities devastated by genocide. She interrogates indigenous forms of justice and how judges constructed truth through community knowledge, emotional labor, and embodied practices.

Her second major research strand critically examines the politics of documentation and archiving in transitional justice. This work troubles the assumed positive relationship between archives and transitional justice, questioning how documentation practices involve power relations and produce systematic silences rather than serving as neutral repositories of evidence. She explores how documentation and archiving processes shape whose stories are told, whose deaths are remembered, and whose silences are reproduced. Julia is particularly interested in the intersection of digital technologies with human rights documentation and archiving practices, examining both the promises and perils they present for justice and memory work.

Julia is curator of the award-winning Kwibuka Rwanda photographic exhibition and Traces of the Past display at Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum, developed in partnership with Rwandan communities. The project Remembering Rwanda received the University of Oxford Vice-Chancellor's Award for outstanding public engagement with research in 2019. She co-hosts the podcast series Can the Record be Trusted?, which brings together UN archivists, field researchers, international prosecutors, and preservation specialists to examine digital human rights documentation and archiving across diverse contexts. Julia has published widely on transitional archives, gacaca courts, trauma and testimony, and memorial practices, and has co-edited two books: Beyond Evidence: The Use of Archives in Transitional Justice (Routledge 2022) and Localising Memory in Transitional Justice (Routledge 2022).

Previously, Julia was Senior Lecturer at University of Bristol. Before that she held different positions at the University of Oxford both at the Faculty of Law and the African Studies Centre where she taught on the MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice and the MSc in African Studies. She has also worked as a consultant on transitional justice and memory for various development aid organizations and German government bodies. She holds a PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies from the Centre for Conflict Studies, University of Marburg.

Research Interests

Transitional Justice

Trauma

Memorialisation

Human Rights Documentation

Human Rights Archives

Technology and Human Rights/Transitional Justice

International Criminal Justice

Genocide and Mass Violence

Rwanda

Teaching

CRM2011 State Violence, Resistance and Justice

CRM2009 Justice and Conflict

Particulars

Athena Swan Co-Champion SSESW

Achievements

Oxford University Vice-Chancellor Award for Public Engagement

Keywords

JX International law
GN Anthropology
JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

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3 Similar Profiles
Justice Social Sciences
Rwanda Social Sciences
Courts Social Sciences
Human Rights Social Sciences
Genocide Social Sciences
Archives Social Sciences
Transitional Justice Arts and Humanities
Memory Social Sciences

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Projects

Viebach, J. (PI)

24/05/2024 → …

Project: Research

United Nation Organization
Civil Society
Justice
Human Rights
Colombia

Research output

7 Chapter
3 Article
2 Other report
1 Edited book
2 More
1 Commissioned report
1 Chapter (peer-reviewed)
1 Editorial
Atrocity’s archives: the role of archives in transitional justice

Lühe, U., Viebach, J., Hovestädt, D., Ott, L. & Thorne, B., 2025, swisspeace Handbook on archiving for dealing with the past. Swisspeace, 11 p.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

Justice
Advocacy
Education
Rwanda: transitional justice after genocide

Viebach, J., 2023, After dictatorship: instruments of transitional justice in post-authoritarian systems. Hoeres, P. & Knabe, H. (eds.). De Gruyter, p. 81-148 68 p.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

Open Access

File

1 Citation (Scopus)

122 Downloads (Pure) - ### Rwanda's gacaca courts and the discovery of mass graves

Viebach, J., Bikesha, D. & Moore, A., 2023, Mass graves, truth and justice: interdisciplinary perspectives on the investigation of mass graves. Smith, E. & Klinkner, M. (eds.). Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, p. 80-102 23 p.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

Victims
Mass graves
Rwanda
Courts
Search
Transitional justice and archives

Viebach, J., Hovestädt, D. & Lühe, U., 11 Aug 2023, Research handbook on transitional justice. Lawther, C. & Moffett, L. (eds.). 2nd ed. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, p. 341-358

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter