Mirjana Gavrilović Nilsson

she/her

Working Title of PhD: From State Ideology to Individual Criminal Action: Testimony and Evidence from the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda

Year commenced PhD study: 2020

Institution/Organisation: University of Edinburgh

Funding Source (if any): University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow Jointly Funded PhD studentship

Full or part-time: Full time

PhD Supervisors: Dr Andy Aydin-Aitchison and Dr Erin Jessee

Synopsis of PhD:

Mirjana’s research project asks how atrocity crime as defined by Scheffer (2002) takes place by examining and providing an integrated multi-level analysis of the role of individual perpetrators and the organisational frameworks, such as local governments and municipalities, that structure their activity. This interdisciplinary research brings together Criminology, History and Oral History to deliver methodological and substantive advances in understanding atrocity crimes by looking at the atrocities that occurred in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s and by using the archives of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR) and any related external material as data. This project adopts a qualitative research design based on a purposive sample of cases from the public, online ICTY and ICTR archives and related external documentation. The data will be coded and analysed using qualitative data analysis software.

The main research question is (work in progress): To what extent does witness and perpetrator testimony, and related evidence from ICTs, clarify the role of local government and municipal authority structures in atrocity crimes in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s and be used as a basis for historical and social scientific knowledge?
This has been divided into further sub-questions that will enable her to build a multi-level analysis framework of atrocity crimes.