“Historical and Mental Representations in the Proximity of Massacres: A Comparative Approach of the Genocide of Tutsis from Rwanda and Jews from Poland through the Murder of Neighbors”
Professional Background
Dr. Sidi N’Diaye is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institut des Sciences sociales du Politique (ISP) at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense (France.) He received his PhD in Political Science from the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense in 2012. A native speaker of Soninke, Dr. Sidi N’Diaye possess language skills in French, English, Arabic, Wolof, and Pulaar. While in residence at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Dr. N’Diaye conducted research on his project, “Historical and Mental Representations in the Proximity of Massacres: A Comparative Approach of the Genocide of Tutsis from Rwanda and Jews from Poland through Murders of Neighbors.”
Dr. N’Diaye has published two books: The Violent Past and the Policy of Repentance in Mauritania, 1989-2012 (LGDJ, 2013), and Dissonances, Melodies and Social Policies in Mauritania: Random Discussions and Free Fragments, co-authored with Abdarahmane Ngaidé (L'Harmattan, 2014). He expects to finish his next monograph project by the end of May 2016.
Fellowship Research
For his Judith B. and Burton P. Resnick Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Mandel Center, Dr. N’Diaye examined the place and role of hateful mental representations in the murders of Jewish neighbors during the Second World War in Poland and of Tutsi neighbors during the 1994 genocide. He analyzed these massacres at the “ground level” and compared both psychological and theoretical justifications of these two forms of extreme violence, focusing on individuals and communities.
Dr. Sidi N’Diaye was in residence at the Mandel Center from October 1, 2015 to May 31, 2016.