Professional Affiliation

Associate Research Professor, Fletcher School, Tufts University

Expert Bio

Kimberly Theidon is a medical anthropologist focusing on Latin America. Her research interests include gender-based and sexual violence, transitional justice, reconciliation, and the politics of post-war reparations. She is the author of Entre Prójimos: El conflicto armado interno y la política de la reconciliación en el Perú (Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. first edition 2004; 2nd edition 2009) and Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). She is currently working on two book manuscripts. The first is “Pasts Imperfect: Working with Former Combatants in Colombia,” drawing upon her research with former combatants from the paramilitaries, the FARC and the ELN. The second is “Speaking of Silences: Gender, Violence and Redress in Peru,” an ethnographically grounded study of reparations, gender and justice.

Wilson Center Project

"Speaking of Silences: Gender, Violence and Redress in Peru"

Project Summary

When the Peruvian TRC submitted its Final Report, among its recommendations was a comprehensive reparations program (PIR) that included institutional reforms as well as material and symbolic forms of redress. The PIR was explicitly designed to contribute to national reconciliation, and to founding a “new social pact” between the Peruvian state and its citizenry. I discuss the role that gender played during the truth-gathering phase of Peru’s transitional justice efforts, as well as the current reparations phase. The liberal legal realm is characterized by an “accountability approach” in which the daily violence women experience has yet to be fully defined. I am particularly interested in reparations for gender-based harms, and the fact that reparations presume certain victim categories, speech acts and subject positions. My research allows me to challenge some common sense notions of gender and war, and to think beyond rights and remedies to a more robust sense of gender and harm, of gender and justice.

Major Publications

Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru

Reconstructing Masculinities: Working with Former Combatants in Colombia

Truth with Consequences: Justice and Reparations in Post-Truth Commission Peru