Amy Rothschild is an anthropologist and sociolegal scholar focused on questions of human rights, genocide, and memory in Southeast Asia. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, San Diego and a J.D. from Yale Law School (she received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania). She is assistant professor of sociolegal studies and politics at Ithaca College.
Her in-process book manuscript, Victims and Veterans: Memory, Nationalism, and Human Rights in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste, examines the politics of processes of memory of the 24-year Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste. Data for the book comes from work and long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Timor-Leste, beginning in 2002.
Some of the fellowhips and grants Amy has received to conduct her research include the following: a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship; a Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant; a University of California San Diego President’s Dissertation Writing Fellowship; a Dan David Prize Scholarship (for Studies on History and Memory); a University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation Dissertation Fellowship; and a University of California Pacific Rim Advanced Graduate Research Fellowship.
Before beginning her Ph.D. in anthropology, Amy lived and worked for years in a variety of countries and contexts in the Global South; she also worked as a consultant for the World Bank.
At IC Amy teaches interdisciplinary courses on law and society (with a focus on questions of law and race), human rights and genocide (with a focus on questions of transitional justice), and qualitative [socio-legal] research methods.