Lindsay French

Lindsay French taught social and cultural anthropology at RISD for 27 years. Her research focuses on post-Pol Pot Cambodia and the processes of social and cultural reconstruction in the aftermath of genocide. She is especially interested in families divided by war, displacement and migration, and the efforts to maintain family ties attenuated by time, space, politics, and very different economic opportunities. Her current project looks at an area of unusual religious diversity in northwest Cambodia and these communities’ focus on commonalities rather than difference. More generally, she is interested in migration, both voluntary and forced, Buddhism and everyday life in different parts of the world, the political economy of international interventions, and the challenges of representation, whether ethnographic, photographic, theatrical, or curatorial.