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Forensic Science, Conflict and Justice

Module description

In this module you will critically engage with the sociology of forensic science in conflict and post-conflict scenarios in the Global South.  You will gain in-depth knowledge of the innovations in forensics that are emerging from spaces of protracted conflict, and the challenges to find justice in these scenarios. You will have access to a research-led teaching, looking at current projects developed in Mexico and Colombia, and will critically appraise historical experiences of conflict, disappearance and human rights violations in Srebrenica, Argentina, Congo and other contexts in the Global South.  

This module is suitable for specialist and non-specialist students and has no pre-requisites. However, it will require you to engage with sensitive materials that describe human rights atrocities, violent acts and the treatment of corpses. Throughout the course you will use the sociological and criminological literature to analyse the role that science has in shaping society, human rights and justice.

Module aims - intentions of the module

In a world where expertise is constantly contested and science and technology are presented as the silver-bullet solution to current problems, the aim of the module is to inspire a genuine engagement with innovation and forensics. We hope to achieve this by engaging with cutting edge theoretical innovations in science & technology studies, grounded in over a decade of research with victims and perpetrators of violence and the scientist trying to bring order and evidence to complex contexts in which mass violence, genocide and systematic abuses of human rights have made the pursuit of justice a matter of activism, science and wider social and political innovation. At the end of the course the student will have a very good understanding of the social dynamics of forensic humanitarianism and innovations, ideas, and practices to deal with mass atrocities, political repression, and violence. In sum, the students of this course will have the tools to critically engage with forensic science and its development in diverse political contexts.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Produce a critical engagement with the ontological and epistemological assumptions that inform and shape contemporary forensic science.
• 2. Analyse the political, historical and social implications and drivers that have led to the pursuit of justice and the deployment of forensic science in the modern world, paying attention to the ways in which different social context affect (and are affected by) technical and political arrangements.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Discern how different modes of sociological, political and philosophical conceptual frameworks respond, or fail to respond, to empirical findings, and how in turn empirical data can inform and enrich our theoretical frameworks.
• 4. Think critically about social, psychological and personal issues and develop your social imagination.
• 5. Asses the ways in which different theoretical formulations engage with the personal, psychological and collective dimensions of social action, and how in turn these theoretical constructs relate to the specific historical and material conditions that shape modern forensic science.

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 6. Critical and analytical skills that can easily be transferred to research positions in International NGOS and think tanks working in broad fields such as forensic humanitarianism, conflict and
• 7. Demonstrate written analytical skills by producing and essay on a deadline that could help you select and analyse relevant data to make decisions in policy making roles, government or as part of civil society organisations.

Syllabus plan

1. Introduction to forensics, materiality and evidence.
2. What is the sociology of forensic science?
3. Forensic Science and the state. Case Study: OJ Simpson Case
4. Questioning evidence: from oral testimony to materiality on trial
5. When states’ kill: authoritarianism, dictatorship and democracies
6. The Global South as a site of innovation: from Srebrenica to Mexico’s ‘War on Drugs’
7. Case Study: Argentina and the ‘Disappeared’
8. Forensic Humanitarianism
9. International aid, forensic technical assistance and the Global South
10. The path of the one is the path of the many: Re-imagining forensic science
11. Citizen-led forensics in Mexico (and beyond?)
12. Conclusion: Critical assessment of the status of forensic science in an everchanging world.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Cruz-Santiago, A (2020) ‘Lists, Maps and Bones: The Untold Journeys of Citizen-led Forensics in Mexico’, Victims and Offenders.
• Jasanoff, S. (1998) ‘The eye of everyman: Witnessing DNA in the OJ Simpson trial’, Social Studies of Science, 28, 5/6, pp.713-740.
• Jasanoff, S. (2007) ‘Making Order: Law and Science in Action’ in Hackett, E. Amsterdamska, O., Lynch, M. and Wajcman, J. (eds) Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, pp.761-786, Boston, MA: MIT Press.
• Moon, C. (2013). Interpreters of the Dead: Forensic Knowledge, Human Remains and the Politics of the Past. Social & Legal Studies, 22(2), 149-169.
• Rosenblatt, A. (2015) Digging for the Disappeared. Forensic Sicence after atrocity. Standford Studies in Human Rights, 278 pp.
• Schwartz-Marin, E., & Cruz-Santiago, A. (2016). Forensic Civism: Articulating Science, DNA and kinship in contemporary Mexico and Colombia. Human Remains and Violence: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 58-74.
• Schwartz-Marin, E., & Cruz-Santiago, A. (2016a). Pure Corpses, Dangerous Citizens: Transgressing the Boundaries between Experts and Mourners in the Search for the Disappeared in Mexico. Social Research:An International Quarterly, 483-510.
• Wagner, S. E. (2008). To know where he lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica's Missing. Los Angeles : University of California Press.

Key words search

Forensic, Justice, Conflict