Department: Anthropology
Mairéad Smith is a Ph.D. student in Anthropology whose research is focused on humanitarian organizations' response to sexual violence as a crime against humanity in Sinjar, Iraq. Her Ph.D. project explores how humanitarian organizations’ adoption of the category of survivor as opposed to victim may contribute to divisions and inequalities in post-conflict Sinjar, by leaving some women’s suffering unnoticed or even devalued because it does not fit the newly dominant conception of the "survivor."