Imagining International Justice in Post-Genocide Cambodia (abstract)

Through an innovative student-faculty collaborative research externship program supported by the Ohio University Center for Law, Justice & Culture, several undergraduate students spent the summer of 2014 in Cambodia conducting independent ethnographic research on issues of law, memory, and justice in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge genocide. Utilizing the students’ research in Cambodia, this proposed panel session presents three case studies for a conversation regarding how ethnographic methods can inform transitional justice mechanisms by emphasizing local experiences. Much of the research is in light of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a hybrid tribunal that began in 2007 to try senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge and those deemed most responsible for crimes committed between 1975 and 1979. Collectively, the projects explore connections between international justice and contemporary Cambodian society, including how international justice mechanisms produce global legal consciousness, how this consciousness is claimed and contested by local actors, and how legal categories shape collective identity, memories of the past, and imaginations of the future. The research projects reveal a spectrum of issues related to law, memory, and justice. One of the projects discusses the politics of the word “genocide” as it is used in the Cambodian case, drawing upon the experiences and perceptions of the Cham Muslim minority and Case 002/02 of the ECCC. Another project explores representations of victimhood at the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocidal Crimes as they manifest in debates surrounding a new, ECCC reparations-related memorial on the site. The last project investigates the politics of the cultural production, representation, and translation in genocide exhibitions at three contrasting memorial museums across Cambodia

Up in the Air: A Global Estimate of Non-Violent Drone Use 2009-2015

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, has increased dramatically in recent years. While most attention has gone to military drone use, commercial drones have gained widespread popularity, with uses ranging from leisure activities by hobbyists to humanitarian aid and disaster relief support by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and activist groups. This use has been hard to quantify and regulate. In an effort to better understand the rapid growth of non-weaponized drone, this report analyzes cases of worldwide drone use reported during a six-year period (2009-2015). Utilizing a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, we engage two distinct research questions: (1) what is the nature of civilian drone use over time, and (2) what regulatory responses exist to use at the international, state, and sub-state levels. This six-year window generated more than 15,000 news items for analysis, and resulted in a dataset of 1,145 unique uses. The findings are in line with popular reports: drone usage has grown significantly. New platforms in civilian hands are challenging the status quo response of both regulators and human rights groups. While ethical considerations make direct comparisons nearly useless, non-military use has eclipsed military use. This reality poses fresh challenges to national governments, local municipalities, businesses, and individual actors.https://digital.sandiego.edu/gdl2016report/1000/thumbnail.jp

Towards Diversifying Early Language Development Research: The First Truly Global International Summer/Winter School on Language Acquisition (/L+/) 2021

With a long-term aim of empowering researchers everywhere to contribute to work on language development, we organized the First Truly Global /L+/ International Summer/ Winter School on Language Acquisition, a free 5-day virtual school for early career researchers. In this paper, we describe the school, our experience organizing it, and lessons learned. The school had a diverse organizer team, composed of 26 researchers (17 from under represented areas: Subsaharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and Central and South America); and a diverse volunteer team, with a total of 95 volunteers from 35 different countries, nearly half from under represented areas. This helped world-wide Page 5 of 5 promotion of the school, leading to 958 registrations from 88 different countries, with 300 registrants (based in 63 countries, 80% from under represented areas) selected to participate in the synchronous aspects of the event. The school employed asynchronous (pre-recorded lectures, which were close-captioned) and synchronous elements (e.g., discussions to place the recorded lectures into participants' context; networking events) across three time zones. A post-school questionnaire revealed that 99% of participants enjoyed taking part in the school. Not with standing these positive quantitative outcomes, qualitative comments suggested we fell short in several areas, including the geographic diversity among lecturers and greater customization of contents to the participants’ contexts. Although much remains to be done to promote inclusivity in linguistic research, we hope our school will contribute to empowering researchers to investigate and publish on language acquisition in their home languages, to eventually result in more representative theories and empirical generalizations