• Royce Fellowship
Louisa
Lombard

Concentration 

Development Studies

Award Year 

2002
Gacaca: Accountability and Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda

Faculty Sponsor: Charles Mironko

Since 1994's genocide, Rwandans have searched for a way to restore justice, both in terms of holding perpetrators accountable and enabling the grassroots participation that will underlie reconciliation. Louisa explored the ability of Gacaca, a traditional form of justice, to meet those ends by sitting in on tribunals and talking to the people involved.

The Royce Fellowship fed directly into what has become her vocation: qualitative research in Africa. Louisa began as a researcher working with international organizations she recently completed a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University where she is studying conflicts and politics in Central Africa. Starting in 2014 she will be an assistant professor of anthropology at Yale.