Erin Jessee

Erin Jessee is a senior lecturer in History at the University of Glasgow, with over a decade of experience conducting oral historical and ethnographic fieldwork in conflict-affected settings – particularly Rwanda, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Uganda – with people from different sides of the conflicts, including those who are identified to varying degrees as survivors, bystanders, ex-combatants, and/or perpetrators. She is the author of Negotiating Genocide in Rwanda: The Politics of History (2017), co-editor (with Kjell Anderson) of Researching Perpetrators of Genocide (2021), and has published articles in such notable journals such as Medical History, Memory Studies, Conflict and Society, History in Africa, Oral History Review, and Forensic Science International, among others.

In addition to her research, Jessee teaches undergraduate and graduate classes on oral history, genocide in the twentieth century, and Rwandan history, and offers advanced workshops on the practice of oral history in conflict-affected settings and on managing danger surrounding qualitative fieldwork. She has been an active member of the Oral History Association since 2009, and has served on the Board of Editors for its journal, Oral History Review, since 2013. Additionally, she served on the Task Force charged with updating the OHA’s Principles and Best Practices for Oral History in 2018, and in 2019 joined the editorial team of Oxford University Press’ Oral History series.