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A CONTRIBUTE BY SARAH JANE MEHARG

IDENTICIDE AND CULTURAL CANNIBALISM

English english language


Sarah Jane Meharg

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Geography

Queen’s University Kingston Ontario

Tel: 011 (613) 533-6000 x75940

identicide@hotmail.com

www.postconflict.com

 

Ms. Meharg is currently completing her Ph.D. at Queen’s University, Kingston Canada and has created an NGO called Pre-Conflict Planners. Ms. Meharg will be seeking employment with UNESCO upon graduation in autumn 2002, and hopes to pursue a career in protecting cultural property during conflict and rebuilding cultural spaces in post-conflict communities. She and Dr. Brian S. Osborne will be publishing a book on these topics in 2004 – for the opening of Novi-Most in Mostar. Feel free to contact Ms. Meharg if you are interested in these topics, or if you have an interest in the Bridge of Mostar and its reconstruction.


Identicide and Cultural Cannibalism:

Warfare’s Appetite for Symbolic Place

(Previously published as "Identicide and Cultural Cannibalism: Warfare’s Appetite for Symbolic Place", Peace Research Journal 33:3 November (2001), 89-98.)

Please, no reproductions of this article except by permission from author.

© Sarah Jane Meharg

Ph.D. (Geography) Candidate

Department of Geography, Queen’s University

Kingston, Ontario, Canada


 None need to be reminded of the impact of the ravages of war. Peoples, economies, and political systems all suffer, as do many material icons of cultural heritage. Throughout history, revered monuments and shrines, buildings and sites with historical, aesthetic, or scientific value are destroyed. And often they are deliberately targeted in an attempt at destroying identities. Indeed, identicide and cultural cannibalism are diagnostic features of war, ancient and modern. Some societies have gone to great lengths to erase all traces of other cultures from their landscapes. Sacred sites have been despoiled. Vernacular places have been destroyed, and visual prompts of cultural identity have been elided from familiar places. Paradoxically, this has taken place in Bosnia and Afghanistan even as the rest of the world attempts to preserve and protect sites of cultural heritage as part of our shared patrimony. This paper is concerned with the intentional destruction of symbolic landscapes during warfare. Two extraordinary cases of identicide and cultural cannibalism in recent years were the purposeful destruction of the Bridge of Mostar in Bosnia and the bombing of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan.


Symbolic Place


Landscape provides a context within which humans live, and also provides the boundaries, quite complexly, within which people remake themselves and are "worked" upon by the landscape they have constructed. So framed, "place becomes like personality—unique and particular." Further, landscape is seen as a "prop" of memory and identity and may be contested because it holds significance for people, situating a "sense of place" and "genus loci." This emotional bonding of people with place is psychic in nature4 and resides in the "realm of memory."

As symbolic landscapes create a particularity of place, they also act as narratives of collective memory that underpin the cohesion and identity of groups. Halbwachs argues that "we preserve memories of each epoch in our lives, and these are continually reproduced; through them a sense of our identity is perpetuated. The localization of memory on the material is what negotiates its survival, and by removing the material we begin to erase memory. Without landscape to trigger memory, there is no link with the past, and it recedes beyond our collective memory. Yet, place can also reside in the cerebral, and can exist as a psychic terrain, saturated with meaning and symbolism. Further, "landmarks" represent the convergence of the material with the cerebral, mixing historic and mythic circumstances. They act as mnemonic devices within our lived-in world, representing such things as dates, people, or even myths that aid in the creation of nationalism.

A major thrust in recent geographical studies has involved examining the political uses to which regions are increasingly put by political movements, parties, and ethnocrats.1 Agnew argues that landscapes within regions have a significant role in the "genesis and organization of ethnonationalists and anti-state political movements" and may serve as the ideological foundation upon which political movements can mobilize popular support. Regionalism and a local "sense of place" help restore social belonging that can be readily visualized through landmarks, landscapes, diets, music, clothing and histories, but also to justify ideological movements. Such spatial expressions of "blood and soil" have been used to describe some of the causes of the Balkan war, linking "blood and belonging" to the "constructed" symbolic landscape.


Identicide


War tactics that are meant to denigrate and destroy the social fabric of community are not new. These age-old tactics are some of the most effective war tools, and unfortunately, have been re-introduced into modern warfare. Such acts of identicide subject people to periods of meaninglessness, forgetting, and loss of identity when their bond with place is broken. Globalization and urban change can result in "placelessness"—the opposite of a sense of place. Symbolic landscape hinges upon particularity of place, yet identicide and cultural cannibalism diminish difference among places resulting in a homogenization of landscapes devoid of meaning. People grieve the destruction of symbolic place at a level equated with the death of a loved one, and there is a marked emotional response to the loss of one’s home or homeland that can be described with similar adjectives used to describe feelings of grief. There are many examples throughout history of defiled temples, desecrated altars, and purposeful destruction of symbolic lands, but what is it about landscape that can infuriate a people and draw out intense acts of identicide and cultural cannibalism?

Identity resides in landscape, constructed through a series of factors including gender and historical context. It satisfies a sense of social belonging and evokes a dynamic relationship between the past and the present. Yet, territorial identities can be among the most salient and provoke the greatest degree of ambivalence and conflict between peoples. Wrong argues "identity is always problematic, something that is not just given but that has to be sought, striven for, and forged out of fragments, or if attained is constantly subject to diffusion and confusion, even to outright dissolution." Interestingly, as warfare has become confined within state borders, tactics employed by the Romans and Mongols resurface, and areas of symbolic importance are targeted. In times of conflict, the very sight of another’s cultural symbols can create tension; thus, in Bosnia, a Bosnian Serb may view a Bosnian Muslim mosque as a threatening symbol within a contested cultural landscape, or in Afghanistan, artwork depicting human or animal forms may be considered heretical.

The discourses of genocide reflect the systematic destruction of culture so that the rites, rituals, and places are no longer available to enact culture and the people themselves have been killed or moved. Either way, identity is defective, collective memory is rendered useless, and social fabric is destroyed.


Curbing the Appetite


The impact of war on cultural heritage has spurred a global heritage protection movement. The western world has been concerned with the protection of cultural property for more than a century. The Lieber Code (1864) and the Brussels Declaration (1874) led to The Hague Convention, which in 1907 adopted the "laws and customs of land warfare." This protocol set out the rules of warfare and the protection of PoWs, civilian populations—and cultural property. Subsequently, the League of Nations codified the protection of cultural property, but it was not until 1946 that the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) took over the protection mandate of the League of Nations and concentrated on peacetime protection. In 1954, The Hague Convention approved the "protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict." Further, the UNESCO convention of 1972 encourages signatories to protect their natural and cultural heritage by promoting international co-operation in conservation, providing technical assistance, and offering emergency assistance for world heritage sites in immediate danger. Since 1946, UNESCO has sponsored the identification, protection, and preservation worldwide of cultural and natural heritage considered to be of outstanding value to humanity. To date, 190 states parties have signed the UNESCO convention.

By signing the convention, each country pledges to conserve not only the world heritage sites situated on its territory, but also to protect heritage beyond its borders. Both Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia signed the convention, yet due to the complexities surrounding the breakdown of state leadership, the original agreement was rendered null, and had no bearing on the destruction of cultural property by both the Taliban and the Balkan belligerents. We should ask ourselves if a political legacy offers future accountability. Curiously, such protection was not extended to two examples of ancient symbolic landscape: the Bridge of Mostar and the Bamiyan Buddhas.


Bridge of Mostar


The city of Mostar is located south of Sarajevo on the Neretva River. It was located on an important economic trading juncture and outpost of the Ottoman Empire. The city received the Aga Khan Foundation Award for architecture in 1987 and was an important tourist destination.

In 1557, a bridge was commissioned by Sultan Sulejman the Magnificent to span the Neretva River. It was to incorporate the newest building techniques and style of Ottoman Baroque architecture. The Bridge of Mostar successfully remained intact for over 400 years. Acting as a touchstone of memory, its presence activated the collective memory of the local community and united groups beyond its borders, as a symbol on stamps, currency and as a symbol of the Sarajevo Olympics.

It was a narrow, ivory-coloured limestone structure, peaked in the middle, with steep inclines on both sides, 30 metres long and 20 metres high. It was declared the most beautiful of bridges in the world when it was completed. It was wide enough to accommodate foot travel, and many locals would stroll along it on their evening walk. It was where people met to discuss their business, their lives, and their families. It became a place of romance, where teens received their first kiss. The Bridge of Mostar resonated with rites of passage. It was considered one of the greatest historical monuments of the Balkans.

The worst of the Yugoslav conflict occurred between 1991 and 1994, and the city of Mostar was attacked and destroyed for the duration of the war. In April 1992, Bosnia Serb forces first attacked the Old Bridge. In a strange turn of events, the original protectors of the Bridge, the Bosnia Croats, attacked the bridge in May 1993, when they turned against their Muslim allies on the left bank of the river. Their intention was to split the union of the two shores of Mostar—one shore would be Muslim and the other Croat.

Frantic attempts to protect the bridge with scaffolding, roofing tin, and old rubber were futile. Locals knew the importance of the bridge, and believed that with all its beauty and grace, it was "built to outlive people; it was an attempt to grasp eternity." Yet, despite the bridge’s fame, despite its symbolism to a community and to the nation, the historic bridge was shelled at point-blank range and collapsed into the Neretva River. Later, the Croat soldiers cheered and fired their guns in the air as they revelled in erasing an enduring symbol of multiculturalism in the Balkans.


The Bamiyan Buddhas


Afghanistan is a country rich in history. It has been involved in historical milestones due to its location on the borders of many powerful empires. Buddhism was introduced into the Afghan area in the third century and centralized in the northeast, near the border of Pakistan. At the time, the country lay at the heart of the Silk Route, and all travellers moving east to west overland were required to trek through the Bamiyan Valley region in the northeast. With the caravans came the Buddhist monks, who taught their religion along the route. Eastern Afghanistan became rich with monks, monasteries, sacred places, and profound artwork.

The inspiration of Buddhism called for the construction of two masterpieces to grace the main trade route. The massive statues would greet travellers as they entered the Bamiyan Valley, insuring safe travel as they departed—making the gesture of "reassurance."

The two statues were hewn out of rock around the fourth and fifth centuries AD. They were covered with mud and straw mixture to model the expression of the face, the hands, and the folds of the robes. They were then covered with plaster and painted. The smaller Buddha is 38 m and was coloured blue, and the larger one, standing at 53 m, was red. The hands and faces were of gold.

Most symbols of religion come under scrutiny at one time or another by iconoclasts, and the Buddhas were no different. It appears that this fate was meted out to the frescoes surrounding the Buddhas, and also the monks’ cells located in the hewn rock. The idea of iconoclasm is to take away the soul of the hated image by obliterating, or at least deforming, the head and hands. Yet even with this cannibalism, the Buddhas survived over 1500 years of human activity.

The Taliban became known to the international community in 1994 and began to broker a "sense of peace" in warring Afghanistan. The Taliban now control 90% of the country on the claim of creating a "pure Islamic state." They have attempted to eradicate television, music, cinema, artwork, and health care and education for women all of which that consider immoral or frivolous. The Taliban’s strategy is to rid the country of all non-Islamic symbology, namely "idols" or depictions of humans and animals—which are forbidden by Islam.

Since 1998, the Bamiyan Valley has been in the hands of the Taliban. As early as 1997, the commander in charge of taking over the valley told the international press that as soon as he was able to take control of the area, he would destroy the Buddhas. Of course, this got the attention of UNESCO and other protection agencies—but specifically the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage (SPACH), which has since tried to create a peaceful, non-violent outcome of the Taliban rule in the Bamiyan Valley, and other significant places throughout Afghanistan.

Yet even with pre-destruction knowledge, the international community looked on—appearing to ignore the early warning signs of imminent destruction. In March 2001, the Buddhas were shelled point-blank and reduced to rubble. The Taliban directing the onslaught later cheered and had their photos taken above the piles of rock and dust.


Conclusion: Cultural Cannibalism Satiated?


The lure of control and of staking a claim in a particular locale to declare autonomy and identity are strong factors of both regionalism and nationalism today, and to "lose the landscape is to lose the right to define identity in the landscape." Some societies have gone to great lengths to erase competing symbols on shared landscapes, in order to perpetrate ethnocide, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. This century has witnessed cultural genocide in its extreme with mass murders of civilian populations, in an atrocity that may be compounded by the deprivation of national identity grounded in symbolic landscape.

In contrast to "traditional" inter-state wars in which "warriors" went off to do battle against each other on foreign battlefields, modern intra-state ethnic warfare is characterized by systematic mass killings of civilians in civil conflict. The end result is that civilians are suffering in an unprecedented manner as homes, communities, and symbolic buildings are targeted and destroyed. In particular, landscapes seem to attract the attention of combatants as they appreciate the nuanced power of symbolic landscapes as powerful manifestations of meaning, memory, and identity that contest their own. Powerful political regimes seem to be repelled by such landscapes and attempt to homogenize such environs. Political movements that seek to gain control over the social production of space, place, and landscape to manipulate citizens have been witnessed in the "new" wars contrived by the politicians.

Do cultural cannibalism and identicide satiate warfare’s appetite for symbolic place? Probably not, as there is no accountability for perpetrators destroying world heritage and our shared cultural patrimony. The drive of intentional destruction goes on, and continues in both Bosnia and Afghanistan at an alarming rate. Insatiable cultural cannibalism consumed the bridge and the Buddhas. UNESCO "condemned" these destructive acts, yet condemnation does not stop a regime from eliminating what they please. Peace practitioners need a deeper and more complex understanding of the dynamic relationship between people and place, because the victims of identicide are not the bridge or the Buddhas, but the societies which subscribed to these monuments of culture and spirit. They are left with a sense of placelessness devoid of particularity and familiarity. Not only are the perpetrators guilty of reducing grand architectural edifices to piles of rubble, they are ensuring that culture and identity have nowhere to reside, nowhere to be ritualized, and nowhere to be remembered.

 


Notes:


(1) - Identicide is the act of destroying vernacular and symbolic place during war with the intention of erasing cultural identity and a sense of social belonging; see Sarah Meharg, Making It and Breaking It and Making It Again: The Importance of Identity in the Destruction and Reconstruction of War-torn Societies, (1999). Further, cultural cannibalism is the intentional elimination of symbolism representing a culture, perceived as threatening or contested. It could be argued that identicide and cultural cannibalism are, in fact, conceptually the same, but one distinction must be made. That is, identicide occurs when groups contest and aim to destroy one another’s places of identity, while cultural cannibalism is a diagnostic tool for the destruction of shared world culture and heritage for immediate political, religious, or ideological goals. The Taliban, for example, are aiming to destroy a contested Buddhist landscape impregnated with historical Afghan significance to reach the short-term goal of creating a pure Islamic state. They are in fact, destroying shared cultural patrimony, and cannibalizing culture.

(2) - See W.J.T. Mitchell, Landscape and Power (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), and also the pertinent analysis by D. Mitchell, "The Lure of the Local: Landscape Studies at the End of a Troubled Century," Progress in Human Geography 25, no. 2 (2001), p. 269-81.

(3) - See John Agnew, "Regions in Revolt," Progress in Human Geography 25, no. 1 (2001), p. 103-110.

(4) - See Brian Osborne, "Constructing Landscapes of Power: the George Etienne Cartier Monument, Montreal," Journal of Historical Geography 24 (1998), p. 431-58, for further analysis concerning the significance of psychic terrain and landscape.

(5) - See Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). Entrikin elaborates upon Nora’s point by arguing "the role of place as the repository of collective memory is an enduring geographical theme of considerable contemporary interest," and "the conflation of places and memories is consistent with communitarian particularity and reinforces the common practice of conceiving place-based social relations as particularistic;" see J. Nicholas Entrikin, "Place and Region 3," Progress in Human Geography 21, no. 2 (1997), p. 263-8, see in particular p. 264.

(6) - See Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992); Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory: New Perspectives on the Past (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); Patrick Hutton, History as an Art of Memory (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1993); J. Gillis, Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

(7) - See M. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 47

(8) - See Patrick Hutton, History as an Art of Memory (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1993), p. 79.

(9) - Ibid. Also David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), and Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (New York: The Free Press, 1996).

(10) - See John Agnew, "Regions in Revolt," Progress in Human Geography 25, no. 1 (2001), p. 103-110.

(11) - Ibid.

(12) - See E. Relph, Place and Placelessness (London: Pion, 1976); Douglas Porteous, Planned to Death: The Annihilation of a Place Called Howdendyke (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989); John Entrikin, The Betweeness of Place (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).

(13) - See J. Nicholas Entrikin, "Place and Region 3," Progress in Human Geography 21, no. 2 (1997); Tony Hiss, The Experience of Place: A New Way of Looking At and Dealing With Our Radically Changing Cities and Countryside (New York: Random House, 1990); William Leach, Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in American Life (New York: Pantheon, 1999).

(14) - See Fried in Robert Gutman, People in Buildings (New York: Basic Books, 1972). Interestingly, placelessness is often foregrounded as a problem of post-modern planning and design; for further analyses see Schneekloth and Shibley, Placemaking: The Art and Practice of Building Communities (New York: Wiley, 1995), p.18.

(15) - See Dennis Wrong, "Adversarial Identities and Multiculturalism," Society 37, no. 2 (2000), p. 11.

(16) - For detailed analysis regarding the protection of cultural property, refer to Prott and O’Keefe, Law and the Cultural Heritage Vol.1 (Great Britain: Billing, 1984); Kifle Jote, International Legal Protection of Cultural Heritage (Stockholm: Juristforlaget, 1994); Jiri Toman, The Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (Vermont: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1996).

(17) - Ibid.

(18) - Ibid.

(19) - While cultural property is foregrounded in international protection conventions, the less popular "vernacular property" is left unprotected, although theorists consider it to contribute to the social fabric. As war moves into the urban realm, the ordinary elements, which help provide a sense of identity and social belonging, are ruined.

(20) - See Jerilynn Dodds, "Bridge over the Neretva," Archaeology 51 (January-February 1998), p. 48.

(21) - That same year, SPACH did succeed in halting the imminent destruction of the Buddhas after the same commander drilled holes in the head of the larger Buddha with the aim of inserting dynamite into the holes. Since then, tires have been burned to blacken the face of the statues and munitions have been stored in the lower caves at the base of the larger statue.

(22) - See K. Till, "Staging the Past: Landscape Designs, Cultural Identity, and Erinnerurgspolitik at Berlin’s Neue Wache," Ecumene 6 (1999), p. 251-83.

(23) - Ethnocide is the systematic destruction of cultural practice. For a particularly detailed analysis, see Keith Doubt, Sociology After Bosnia and Kosovo: Recovering Justice (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), p. x, where he argues that "ethnic cleansing" is a profoundly ambiguous and unsuitable concept for social analysis…. Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. As well, according to the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is defined as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, or religious group, as such: a) killing members of the group; b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (see www.un.org for UN Conventions).

(24) - In the case of the Turkish genocide of the Armenians (1915-16), scholars argue that after the genocide the Armenians were further victimized by 80 years of ethnocide depriving them of their national identity. For further analysis of the Armenian Genocide, refer to Richard Hovannisian, Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998). In another example, Serb and Croat armies murdered en masse, and also destroyed symbolic and vernacular landscapes by converting such sacred sites as churches into mosques, museums, prisons, and farms.

(25) - See Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (Toronto: Penguin Books, 1993); John Paul Lederach, Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation across Cultures (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997); Anne Griffiths, Building Peace and Democracy in Post-Conflict Societies (proceedings from workshop at Dalhousie University, 1998); Barnett Rubin, Cases and Strategies for Preventive Action (New York: Century Foundation Press, 1998)

(26) - See Klaus Dodds, "Political Geography III: Some Thoughts on Banality, New Wars, and the Geopolitical Tradition," Progress in Human Geography 24, no. 1 (2000), p.123.

(27) - See D. Mitchell, "The Lure of the Local: Landscape studies at the End of a Troubled Century," Progress in Human Geography 25, no. 2 (2001), p. 278.

(28) - Yet, the reconstruction of symbolic landscapes representative of identity, memory, regionalism and nationalism becomes problematic when it increases ethnic hatred and challenges fragile states of peace.


author of the text:

Sarah Jane Meharg

note about the author:

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Geography

Queen’s University Kingston Ontario

Tel: 011 (613) 533-6000 x75940

identicide@hotmail.com

www.postconflict.com

Ms. Meharg is currently completing her Ph.D. at Queen’s University, Kingston Canada and has created an NGO called Pre-Conflict Planners. Ms. Meharg will be seeking employment with UNESCO upon graduation in autumn 2002, and hopes to pursue a career in protecting cultural property during conflict and rebuilding cultural spaces in post-conflict communities. She and Dr. Brian S. Osborne will be publishing a book on these topics in 2004 – for the opening of Novi-Most in Mostar. Feel free to contact Ms. Meharg if you are interested in these topics, or if you have an interest in the Bridge of Mostar and its reconstruction.

Awards

2002 Graduate Dean’s Doctoral Field Travel Grant

2001 Newcombe Peace Research Award

2001 Naidu Conference Presentation Award, CPREA

1999-2001 Queen’s Graduate Student Fellowship Award

1999-2001 Females in Doctoral Studies Award

Masters Thesis Advisor:

Dr. Heather Nicol, Royal Military College of Canada

Dr. Brian S. Osborne, Queen’s University

Doctoral Thesis Advisor:

Dr. Brian S. Osborne, Queen’s University

Publications

Nov 2001 "Cultural Warfare: Cultural Property: An Unlikely Partnership", United Nations Association Capital Region, 6-7.

Nov 2001 "Identicide and Cultural Cannibalism: Warfare’s Appetite for Symbolic Place" Peace Research Journal 33:3 (2001), 89-98.

May 2001 "Identicide and Cultural Cannibalism: Warfare’s Appetite for Symbolic Place" CPREA Conference Presentation Abstract, Peace Research Journal 33:2 (2001).

1998 -  Making and Breaking It and Making It Again: The Importance of Identity in the Destruction and Reconstruction of War-torn Societies. MA (War Studies) thesis, Royal Military College of Canada.

1995 - "The Extension of the UN Mandate in Haiti". Journal of Peacekeeping and International Relations. Vol. 3 No. 6 Nov/Dec.

1996 -  "Review of the Atlantic Provinces Political Science Conference 1996" Journal Of Peacekeeping and International Relations. Vol. 3 No. 6 Nov/Dec.

Education

Queen’s University Kingston, Canada Ph.D. Candidate (Geography) 1999-

RMC Kingston, Canada MA (War Studies) 1997-1999

University of Guelph Guelph, Canada B. Landscape Architecture 1990-1996

University of Toronto France, Spain Architecture 1995

Queen’s University England Art History, Spanish 1995

Havergal College Toronto, Canada OSSD 1985-1990

Languages

Fluent: English

Working knowledge: French, Spanish, Italian

Professional Experience

2000-2001

Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston

Research Analyst, Project: Sierra Leone and 3rd Party Intervention

  • QSR NUD*IST text analysis software, created Sierra Leone database.

1999-2002

Queen’s University, Kingston

Teaching Assistant – Department of Geography

  • Six different courses over six semesters, taught large and small seminars, evaluated lab exercises, papers, mid-term exams, and final exams, assisted students with writing, reading, and analysis of course content.

1998

Peace Support Training Centre, CFB Kingston

Technical Analyst

  • Collected, analyzed, and disseminated data on Stress and Coping study within the Canadian Forces (D.C.I.E.M.), updated all databases using Teleform technology.

1998-1999

Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston

Research Assistant / Teaching Assistant (Geography)

1996

Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, Nova Scotia

Internship

  • Attended all course curriculum offered by the PPC, ran seminars with international participants, was responsible for increasing course attendance, implemented a public relations and advertising campaign, designed adds to appear in Time and Maclean’s Magazines.

how to contact:

Tel: 011 (613) 533-6000 x75940

identicide@hotmail.com

www.postconflict.com


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