Jaymelee Kim

JAYMELEE KIM, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, was approved funding in April 2023 to aid research on “Forensic Science Cultures: Beliefs, Perceptions, and Pursuits of Victim Identification in Post-War Uganda.” This project examined how communities, scientists, and state actors in Uganda conceptualize and pursue — or refrain from pursuing — identification of the war dead two decades after the Lord’s Resistance Army conflict. We conducted a three-week field season in July 2024 in the Acholi sub-region, building on more than a decade of collaborative research. Through interviews, focus groups, and community feedback sessions with three clans, we investigated how transitional-justice policies intersect with Acholi cosmologies, particularly the concept of cen — spiritual unrest caused by improper burial. Findings revealed: 1) the continued absence of formal forensic interventions; 2) the persistence of spiritual and ecological disorder; and 3) the need to reconceptualize forensic practice through a socioecological lens that centers relational care between the living, the dead, and the land. This phase produced a co-authored manuscript in American Anthropologist, community-based art and music collaborations, and pedagogical materials integrating these insights into forensic anthropology curricula. The research underscores how culturally grounded approaches to death, justice, and science challenge universalist models of forensic intervention, or even “the right to know,” advancing a more holistic and ethical anthropology of the dead.