Associate Professor Lia Kent

Associate Professor Lia Kent

Position: MemoryHub Convenor

School and/or Centres: Research School of Humanities and the Arts

Email: lia.kent@anu.edu.au

Researcher profile: https://researchprofiles.anu.edu.au/en/persons/lia-kent

Lia Kent is a Senior Fellow in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the ANU. Working at the intersection of memory studies and critical peace and conflict studies, Lia’s research focuses on the myriad ways in which individuals and communities make sense of legacies of state violence and protracted conflict. She is especially interested in how vernacular memory-work and practices of social repair intersect with discourses and practices of statecraft and globally-circulating discourses of transitional justice and peacebuilding. She has examined these themes through long-term ethnographic research in Timor-Leste (since 2004) and more recent research in Aceh (Indonesia) and Sri Lanka. Lia is the author of The Dynamics of Transitional Justice: International Models and Local Realities in East Timor (Routledge 2012) and several edited books. Lia is currently an ARC Future Fellow (2021-2024). Her project examines localised social and political responses to conflict-related missing persons in Timor-Leste and Sri Lanka in order to reshape the problem of ‘the missing’. Lia is also involved an ARC Discovery Project led by Professor Cressida Fforde examining Heritage and Reconciliation in Australia and New Zealand.

Updated:  8 November 2022/Responsible Officer:  RSHA Director/Page Contact:  CASS Marketing & Communications