Living for the Dead

For nearly 30 years, I dedicated my life to the dead.

After changing my major twice in college, I finally settled on anthropology with the intention of going to law school. In one of my first anthropology courses, Dr William Maples, a forensic anthropologist, gave a guest lecture. He spoke for 50 minutes. I was awestruck. I wanted to be him.

After convincing Dr Maples to let me volunteer in his lab as an undergrad, and then convincing him to take me as a grad student, I started my graduate studies with the enthusiasm only the very young can have. I minored in forensic psychology. I dreamed of working for the FBI. 

Early in my graduate studies, I had the chance to go to Bosnia as a consulting anthropologist with Physicians for Human Rights, under the auspices of the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. I arrived just one year after the Dayton Peace Accords were signed, formally ending the war in the Balkans. 

Our task was to collect evidence for the Tribunal in their prosecution of war criminals. I worked in the field that first year as part of the team recovering the bodies of more than 8,000 men and boys slaughtered in the massacre of Srebrenica. I spent my 25^th birthday in a mass grave. I had gone to Bosnia because it sounded cool. It changed my life.

I returned home after seven weeks in the Balkans and reoriented my career. I read every article I could find, and every book I could afford, on the Balkans war. I read about other genocides. I read about the families left behind and the suffering of those who had lost loved ones I helped recover.

Over the next ten years, I returned to Bosnia and Kosovo six more times with three different organizations. I took missions to other countries with still more organizations. I focused my PhD minor on human rights and humanitarian assistance, taking courses at the law school and other colleges across the University of Florida to round out my education.

Then, just after completing my PhD coursework, I received an email from a friend I’d worked with several times in the Balkans. She’d recently been hired by the International Committee of the Red Cross as a Forensic Advisor at the ICRC’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. She wanted to know if I’d take a one-year field position. I was to serve as the Regional Forensic Advisor for the Caucasus and Balkans.

I had only ever accepted short-term contracts until then. And I had a dissertation to write. But my friend was persuasive. So, I submitted a letter to my department stating that I was taking a one-year sabbatical from my program, after which I’d return to finish my PhD with earnest. 

That was 20 years ago. I never went back.

Over the next 18 years, I served in several roles for the ICRC, both as staff and as a consultant. Unlike my work for the Tribunal, the ICRC’s mandate was purely humanitarian. We didn’t collect evidence for courts. My mission was to help find, recover, and identify individuals who died in armed conflict or other large-scale catastrophes and return them to their loved ones. 

But we didn’t do the work ourselves at the ICRC. My role was to assist local governmental and non-governmental structures in doing the work. The aim was to help them help themselves. The focus was on developing short- and long-term strategies, standardizing operations, fostering communication within and between organizations, developing legal frameworks to protect the dead and their families, and managing the massive amounts of data generated by forensic operations. I provided guidance, training, and support.

Because they can no longer speak for themselves, the dead are often overlooked as victims in need of support. Too often, they’re seen only as tools for the courts, weapons in political battles, or the property of their families. 

I feel deeply honored to have spent so much of my life restoring dignity to those who have passed by returning their names to them, sending them home to their loved ones, and ensuring they aren’t forgotten.