Lara Rosenoff Gauvin

• ANTH 2000 - Culture, Society, and Power
• ANTH 4850 - Advanced Seminar in Contemporary Anthropological Theory
• ANTH 4080/7080 - Museums, Memory, and Witnessing

Lara is a mother, daughter, wife, and is co-chair of the Respectful Rematriation and Repatriation Ceremony and Associate Professor of Socio-Cultural Anthropology. She works closely with the Council of Elders, Grandmothers, Grandfathers, and Knowledge Keepers to assure that they guide all aspects of the Ceremony. 

She first came to rematriation work in Manitoba after a decade and a half of work with Acoli Elders and youth in conflict and post-conflict Northern Uganda, and thus, her approach to rematriation has been centered on intergenerational Indigenous knowledge and sovereignty, human rights and responsibilities, justice, and institutional truth-telling. 

As the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, she understands the acquisition of Indigenous Ancestors and heritage by settler institutions as a direct legacy of dehumanizing colonial and settler-colonial genocide and therefore approaches the work as a necessary step in the country, and her own, relational repair and atonement journey.

• PhD (Anthropology), University of British Columbia, 2016
• MFA (Documentary Media), Toronto Metropolitan University, 2009
• BA (Communication Studies), Concordia University, 1998

Research interests

• Repatriation
• Rematriation
• Relational repair
• Transitional justice 
• Land rights
• Human rights
• Museums
• Documentary

Research summary

Lara is a scholar, artist, advocate, and curator whose work centres the knowledge, practices, and rights of survivors of violence, conflict, and forced displacement.

Research Affiliates

• Co-chair - Respectful Rematriation and Repatriation Ceremony
• Affiliate Researcher - Centre for Human Rights Research
• Partner - Transformative Memory International Network
   

• 2024 "Making home alive again after war: Acoli Kaka’s Indigenous land sovereignties in Northern Uganda." The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
• 2023 Co-editor with Plaut, S., Bilotta, N., Clark-Kazak, C. and M. Felices Luna. Messy Ethics in Human Rights Work. UBC Press.
• 2023 Chapter 13 – “But Where is the Violence?: Reflections on Honouring Relationships and Troubling Academia.” In Messy Ethics in Human Rights Work, UBC Press Pp.237-250.
• 2021“Anthropology Now: COVID-19”: Thoughts on Learning and Teaching about a Global Pandemic during a Global Pandemic. Anthropology Now 13(2): 87-97. With N. Catalano, M. Dousti, S. Heidinger, L. Hydesmith, D. MacDonald, and T.Neustaeter.
• 2019 "Beyond the Frame of Violence: Ten Years of Visual Engagement in Northern Uganda." Visual Ethnography. 8(2).
• 2019 "Love In and After War: Courtship (Cuna) in Rural Acoliland, Northern Uganda." In Oluwakemi M. Balogun, Lisa Gilman, Melissa Graboyes, and Habib Iddrisu (Eds.). Africa Every Day: Fun, Leisure, and Expressive Culture on the Continent (133-142). Ohio: Ohio University Press.