Whose Voices are Heard? Victimhood and Dark Tourism in Cambodia

Project Commenced: 01/09/2017

Project Completion Date: 30/03/2018

Project PI/s

Dr. Cheryl Lawther

Other staff or partners

Dr. Rachel Killean,  Dr. Lauren Dempster, Documentation Centre of Cambodia

Project Description

Dark tourism, the phenomenon of visiting sites associated with death and suffering, is on the rise. Key sites for visitors include Auschwitz-Birkenau, Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh Cambodia, Ground Zero, Alcatraz and Robben Island. Such sites are founded on traumatic loss and large-scale victimisation. Yet research on dark tourism often focuses on the experiences of tourists and the custodial and managerial practices of those running the sites. Under-researched are issues such as the representation of victims’ voices at such sites, the extent to which victims are able to exercise agency and ownership of their narratives and the ways in which the complexity of victimhood in post-conflict or post-authoritarian contexts may be (mis)represented. This project explores these themes in the context of Cambodia.

Since 1980 the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide and Choeung Ek Killing Fields have been used as evidence of the Khmer Rouge regime’s crimes, as well as sites of memorialization and education. Drawing on interviews with survivors of the regime, as well as other actors connected to the sites, this project asks questions such as: how do victims of the Khmer Rouge regime regard Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek? Whose voices are heard, and whose voices are silenced, within the two sites? To what extent are victims able to exercise ownership over the stories which are told? How are hierarchies of victimhood represented within the sites? Are sites of mass atrocity an appropriate place in which to explore the complexities of mass violence?

Awarding Bodies

DfE-GCRF