Laura De Becker
Research Student
Education
2007 – 2008: MA in the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich (UK)
2006-2007: MA in Ethnic Arts, University of Ghent (Belgium)
2003-2006: BA in Art History, University of Ghent (Belgium)
Research Interests
Arts of Africa, Contemporary African Art, Anthropology, Post-conflict Resolution, Conflict and Development, Politics, Cultural Heritage
PhD Thesis
After writing my MA dissertation for the Sainsbury Research Unit on the topic of contemporary art in post-Apartheid South Africa, I became very interested in the relationship between arts, cultural heritage and post-conflict resolution. Hence, I decided to write my PhD thesis on ‘the visual representation of the 1994 Rwandan genocide’. The term’ visual representation’ includes contemporary artworks, theatre, film, museums and memorials. I want to research how these different media tackle the problem of ‘representing the unimaginable’. Ideally, I would like to compare the representation of the Rwandan genocide, to the way it is represented in Burundi and possibly other genocides across the globe.