The University of Manitoba campuses and research spaces are located on original lands of Anishinaabeg, Ininiwak, Anisininewuk, Dakota Oyate, Dene and Inuit, and on the National Homeland of the Red River Métis. More
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada, R3T 2N2
Teaching Areas
Phone: 204-474-6157
Email: Kjell.anderson@umanitoba.ca
Twitter: twitter.com/Kjell_Anderson
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kjellanderson
LinkTree: linktr.ee/kjellanderson
Kjell Anderson is a jurist and social scientist whose work explores how mass atrocities unfold, how survivors narrate them, and how societies pursue justice in their aftermath. Trained in international law and conflict studies, he combines legal analysis with qualitative fieldwork to examine the lived experiences of both perpetrators and survivors of extreme violence.
Anderson is the author of Perpetrating Genocide: A Criminological Account (Routledge, 2019), a comparative study of how ordinary individuals become involved in extraordinary crimes. He is also the co editor, with Erin Jessee, of Researching Perpetrators of Genocide (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020), the first comprehensive volume on the ethics and methodologies of perpetrator research.
His forthcoming book, The Dilemma of Dominic Ongwen (Rutgers University Press, 2027), draws on extensive interviews to examine the life of Dominic Ongwen—abducted as a child into the Lord’s Resistance Army and later convicted by the International Criminal Court. The book probes the moral, legal, and political contradictions at the heart of international justice.
Anderson is co editor and contributor to Gib Nicht Auf! (avant verlag, 2026), a graphic novel telling the story of Jilan - a survivor of the Yezidi Genocide. He also served as creative consultant for the award winning documentary short I Just Keep Going, which follows the collaborative process behind the graphic novel.
His professional work spans advocacy, research, and teaching across multiple continents. He has supported victims of torture and sexual violence in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo with FACT Rwanda; led the rule of law program at The Hague Institute for Global Justice; worked on Indigenous rights at the Inter American Commission on Human Rights; and served as a legal researcher for a crimes against humanity trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
Anderson has taught at the University of the Fraser Valley, Leiden University, the University of Amsterdam, the National University of Rwanda, and the National University of Ireland. He has held research appointments in the Transitional Justice Program at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies (Amsterdam), the Department of Sociology at the University of the South Pacific (Fiji), and the National University of Juridical Sciences (India).
His fieldwork includes qualitative interviews with perpetrators and survivors of genocide and crimes against humanity in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Bosnia, Cambodia, India, and Bangladesh, as well as key actors in nationalist movements in Fiji and Kanaky/New Caledonia. In 2016, he joined a fact finding mission investigating Islamic State atrocities against minority communities in northern Iraq.
He has delivered transitional justice training workshops in South Africa, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and Burundi, and contributed to short courses at the Free University Berlin, the Bergen Belsen International Summer School, and the Kigali Memorial Centre (Aegis Trust).
Anderson is a former vice president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and has served on the Board of Directors of the Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention. He was also a member of the advisory board for the AHRC funded project Compromised Identities? Reflections on Perpetration and Complicity under Nazism at University College London.
His current work focuses on survivor accounts of the Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar and transitional justice processes for Indigenous peoples in Brazil. He is the Syria–Iraq cluster co lead for the Survivor Centred Visual Narratives project, a SSHRC Partnership Grant initiative that brings together survivors and artists to create graphic novels for educational use across multiple countries, including Canada, Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Iraq, Syria, and Holocaust related contexts.
Anderson holds a PhD in International Human Rights Law from the National University of Ireland, an LLM in Human Rights from Utrecht University, and MA/BA degrees in International Affairs (conflict studies) from Carleton University and the University of Saskatchewan.
• Genocide and mass atrocities
• International criminal law
• Criminology of international crimes
• Perpetrator studies
• Human rights
• Transitional justice
• Armed conflict
• Hate crimes and hate speech
• Research methods in dangerous or sensitive political contexts
• Qualitative interviewing
The Dilemma of Dominic Ongwen: A Child Soldier on Trial. Genocide, Political Violence, and Human Rights Series. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, forthcoming 2027.
Gib Nicht Auf! Wie Eine Junge Ezidin Den Vokermord Uberlebt. Authored by Birgit Weyhe and Jilan and Co-edited by Kjell Anderson, Leyla Ferman and Charlotte Schallié. Berlin: avant-verlag, 2026.
Approaching Perpetrators: Insights on Ethics, Methods, and Theory. Passed editorial review, Under peer review, University of Wisconsin Press (Critical Human Rights series). Co-edited by Erin Jessee.
Perpetrating Genocide: A Criminological Account. London: Routledge, 2018.
“Researching Perpetrators, Revisited,” Journal of Perpetrator Research (2024). Co-edited by Erin Jessee.
“Duress and Resistance in the Lord’s Resistance Army,” in preparation.
“Introduction: Researching Perpetrators, Revisited,” Journal of Perpetrator Research (2024). Co-authored by Erin Jessee.
“Judicial Inference of the Intent to Destroy: A Critical Socio-legal Analysis.” Journal of International Criminal Justice 17, iss. 1, (March 2019). Pages 125–150.
“'Who was I to stop the killing?’ Moral Neutralization Among Rwandan Genocide Perpetrators.” Journal of Perpetrator Research 1, no. 1 (2017).
“The Islamic State’s Êzîdî genocide in Iraq: The ‘Sinjār Operations’.” Genocide Studies International, 10.2 (March 2017). Co-authored by Fazil Moradi.
“Colonialism and ‘Cold Genocide’: The Case of West Papua.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 9.2 (October 2015).
“Nationalism in New Caledonia.” Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism (Fall 2004). Co-authored by Alan B. Anderson.
“Narratives of Genocide Denial: The Rohingya ICJ Case,” in development, forthcoming.
“Between Margins and Mountains: The History and Culture of the Yezidi.” Co-authored by Leyla Ferman. In I Did Not Give Up – How a Young Yezidi Woman Survived Genocide (see above).
“Editor’s Notes”. Co-authored by Leyla Ferman and Charlotte Schallié. In I Did Not Give Up – How a Young Yezidi Woman Survived Genocide (working title) (see above).
“The Victimology of Atrocity Crimes.” Research Handbook on Victims, Rights, and Justice. Edited by Robyn Holder, Verónica Michel and Alice Bosma. Elgar Edwards. Forthcoming, 2026.
“Transitional Justice.” Routledge Handbook of Genocide Studies. Edited by Jeff Bachman and John Cox. Routledge. Forthcoming, 2026.
“Genocide Against the Êzidîs in Iraq: The Sinjar Massacre and its Aftermath.” In Oxford Handbook of Atrocity Crimes, edited by Barbora Hola, Hollie Nyseth Nzitatira, and Maartje Weerdesteijn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.
“Perpetrators in the Modern Age.” In Cultural History of Genocide – The Modern Age, vol. 6 (1945-2017), edited by Deborah Mayersen and Paul Bartrop. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.
“The Perpetrator Imaginary.” In Researching Perpetrators of Genocide, edited by Kjell Anderson and Erin Jessee. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2020.
“Conclusion: Toward a Code of Practice for Qualitative Research Among Perpetrators.” In Researching Perpetrators of Genocide, edited by Kjell Anderson and Erin Jessee. Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 2020. Co-authored by Erin Jessee.
“Introduction.” In Researching Perpetrators of Genocide, edited by Kjell Anderson and Erin Jessee. Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 2020. Co-authored by Erin Jessee.
“Perpetrators versus Perpetration: Processes, Definitions, Typologies.” In Routledge Handbook of Perpetrator Studies, edited by Susanne Knittel and Zachery Goldberg. London: Routledge, 2019. Co-authored by Ugur Umit Ungor.
“Colonialism and Cold Genocide: The Case of West Papua.” In Cultural Genocide: Law, Politics, and Global Manifestations, edited by Jeffrey S. Bachman. London: Routledge, 2019.
“The Margins of Genocide: Individual Agency and Positionality in Genocide.” In Perpetrators of International Crimes - Methodology, Theory and Evidence, edited by Alette Smeulers, Maartje Weerdesteijn, and Barbora Hola. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
“Teaching About Perpetrators.” In Teaching About Genocide: Insights and Advice from Secondary Teachers and Professors, vol. 1, edited by Samuel Totten. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018.
“Collective Crimes, Collective Memory, and “Transitional Justice in Bangladesh.” In Understanding the Age of Transitional Justice: Narratives in Historical Perspective, edited by Nanci Adler. New Brunswick, USA: Rutgers University Press, 2018.
“Mainstreaming Atrocity: Radicalisation in Genocide and Terrorism.” In Rethinking Security in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Edwin Daniel Jacob. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
“Punishment as Prevention: The International Criminal Court and the Prevention of International Crimes.” In The International Criminal Court and Africa: One Decade On, edited by Evelyn Ankumah. The Hague: Intersentia, 2016.
“State Deviancy and Genocide.” In Genocide: New Perspectives on its Causes, Courses, and Consequences, edited by Ugur Umit Ungor. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016.
“Understanding the Unthinkable.” Autobiographical essay. In Advancing Genocide Studies: Personal Accounts and Insights from Scholars in the Field, edited by Samuel Totten. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2015.
“The universality of war: jus ad bellum and the right to peace in non-international armed conflicts.” In The Challenge of Human Rights: Past, Present, and Future, edited by David Keane and Yvonne McDermott. Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 2012.
Book Review: “East West Street,” by Philippe Sands. H-Genocide. June 2018.
Book Review: “Violence as a Generative Force: Identity, Memory, and Nationalism in a Balkan Community,” by Max Bergholz. Genocide Studies and Prevention 18, no. 1 (March 2018), pp. 103-105.
Book Review: “The Crime of All Crimes,” by Nicole Hahn Rafter. Holocaust and Genocide Studies 32, Issue 1, (April 2018), pp. 133–134.
Book Review: “On the Path to Genocide,” by Deborah Mayerson. Journal of African History 58, no. 1 (March 2017).
Book Review: “Incitement in International Law by Wibke Timmermann.” Leiden Journal of International Law 28, No. 2 (2015).
“Interim Editor’s Introduction.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 8.2 (2014). Co-authored by Amy Fagin, Melanie O’Brien, and Rafiki Ubaldo.
“I Just Keep Going”. Forthcoming 2026. I am the creative co-producer of this documentary short on the making of I did not Give Up (see above). The film was awarded “Best Documentary Short” at the 2026 Cinematics Film Festival.
“Forfeit Legitimacy: Syria and the Responsibility to Protect.” Policy Brief #2. The Hague, Netherlands: The Hague Institute for Global Justice, 2013. Co-authored with Tessa Alleblas.
“Conflict Risk Assessment: Oceania.” Ottawa: Country Indicators in Foreign Policy, Carleton University, 2004.
“Milorad Trbic Trial Chamber Judgement (Court of Bosnia, War Crimes Chamber).” Oxford Reports in International Law. Oxford University Press, September 2016.
“Simon Bikindi Appeals Chamber Judgement (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda).” Oxford Reports in International Law. Oxford University Press, October 2011.
“Simon Bikindi Trial Chamber Judgement.” Oxford Reports in International Law. Oxford University Press, November 2011.
“Rule 11 Bis Referral: Prosecutor v. Ljubicic and Prosecutor v. Todovic (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.” In Annotated Leading Cases for International Tribunals 30, edited by Goran Sluiter and André Klip. The Hague: Intersentia, 2012.
Voices from the Naf River - "UM Today" (July 18, 2025).
Armed Groups in International Law – “Ongwen Blog Symposium: Ongwen Unsworn.” (April 16, 2021).
Robson Crim - “The Dominic Ongwen Trial at the International Criminal Court.” (March 2, 2021).
Justice in Conflict – “Dominic Ongwen: “It is very difficult to balance all that.” (February 2, 2021).
Justice Hub (Radio Netherlands Worldwide) – “The Humanity of Evil: Interviewing Genocide Perpetrators” (March 2018).
Peace Palace Library – “Perspectives on Mass Violence – Conflict Studies and Genocide Studies Compared” (February 2018).
Centre for International Criminal Justice Blog (Vrije Universiteit) – “Perpetrating Genocide" (November 2017).
Supranational Criminology Newsletter – “Fact-Finding on Mass Atrocities and the Persecution of Minorities in northern Iraq” (July 2016).
Supranational Criminology Newsletter – “The Ezidis and the Question of Genocidal Intent” (July 2015).
OpenCanada.org – three articles on terrorism and Canada (October 2014).
Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention – four-part blog series on mass violence in Burma (October-November 2014); commentary on the Assembly of State Parties of the International Criminal Court (November 2013).
The Hague Institute for Global Justice- seven web commentaries for The Hague Institute for Global Justice blog (www.thigj.org) such as “The Long Life of Apartheid,” “Syria and the Serendipity of Outrage,” and “Kenya and the ICC: What’s Next?” (2013).
Member, Board of Directors, Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention.
Chair of Advisory Board, Coalition des Volontaires pour la Paix et le Dévelopement en République démocratique du Congo.
Member, Advisory Council, Post-Genocide Education Fund.
Trouw (Netherlands), “We need to understand genocide planners, says Kjell Anderson, because they look a lot like us,” January 20, 2019.
CBC, “Ordinary' people behind brutal acts of genocide, Saskatoon author says in new book,” September 19, 2017.
Justice Hub, “My Justice - Profile Kjell Anderson,” March 13, 2015.
