Randall Mason: Rwandan Genocide Memorials

Nyamata Memorial is one of eight national memorials in Rwanda created to remember the 800,000 people killed in the 1994 genocide. A deconsecrated church is the memorial’s center. There, a large collection of victim’s clothes sits on open display. The clothes are a powerful memorial to the missing and present vexing conservation, interpretation and management challenges. This talk draws on several years’ work by a Weitzman School of Design team partnering with the Rwandan government.

Randall Mason teaches in the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation and is Associate Professor in the Department of City & Regional Planning. His courses focus on historic preservation planning, urban conservation, history, and cultural landscape studies. Mason's research interests include theory and methods of preservation planning, cultural policy, the economics of preservation, historic site management, the history and design of memorials, and the history of historic preservation. He leads the Urban Heritage Project, which undertakes applied research projects on site management and on social, economic and political aspects of historic preservation.