Sarah-Jane Koulen - United States

My research background is in international law and cultural anthropology, with a focus on international criminal law. The focus lies on the kinds of norms and values that underlie international legal agreements, what agreements are made, what types of conduct are considered international crimes, and how do we cooperate in the field of justice.

My dissertation was a close description of how international lawyers set up the International Criminal Court (ICC) and dived into questions around what it means to work at the ICC and belong to a group of mobile, highly-educated lawyers developing a new field of international legal practice.  

Currently, I am working on a project focusing on the intersections between asylum law and international criminal law and how states seek to regulate that. This is quite an interesting discussion in various countries, including the US and the Netherlands.

In the state I currently live, Pennsylvania, there is a large diaspora of Liberians who emigrated here during the Liberian Civil War in the early 1990s and have been here for 30 years. Recently, there have been several immigration fraud cases brought against Liberian American men accused of having lied about their past and possible involvement with armed conflict and war crimes in their application for asylum.

These trials are ongoing, and the questions I am interested in researching further are around who gets to be a US citizen and what the remedy is when asylum laws are violated. Will the men be deported? Can they serve their sentences in the US? What will happen to their families, as they have been building a life in the US for 30 years? And why are these cases being pursued now, 30 years later?

Traveling has been a big part of my life, as I was born here and grew up in the Netherlands, New York City, and Trinidad & Tobago. I have always been interested in how things work in different countries. And for me, justice is something you feel. It involves questions of equity, access, and what the state provides. My interest lies with the lives people live in relation to the legal system, and the laws that are in place.

The Netherlands and the US have strong similarities, but also strong differences. An interesting angle to foster a dialogue around is how social security works, and how people see the role of the state.

In the US, many believe in the idea of freedom and opportunity, which isn’t an exact match with how things are in the Netherlands. For me personally, it meant, at the time, that doing my research here in an interdisciplinary way is easier than in the Netherlands as it is easier to combine different academic disciplines.

Additionally, discussions on tempering the free market and thinking about access and equity are topics that would benefit from international collaboration. For me, the awareness that, as a country, you are not the only one dealing with an issue is important. Other countries deal with similar issues, and there is no one answer but different solutions exist. Looking beyond borders is essential.

In the past I organized a summer school for American university students to travel to The Hague and attend trials of the ICC. For them to learn that these are public hearings, and that you have access to that as a citizen of the world, was very rewarding.

Recently, I traveled with colleagues from different institutes to Rwanda. In cooperation with the University of Kigali, we discussed their views on international law and responses to justice after mass atrocity. It was very interesting to learn more about the current climate and Rwandan context and to improve understanding among each other.

As a social scientist, it is not always clear what the concrete impact of my work is. For example, I am not creating a cure for cancer. Having said that, I think the interdisciplinary conversations in the field of anthropology have raised awareness in the global north about the importance of study our own processes.

Anthropologists have traditionally focused on understanding social practices ‘somewhere else’, but more contemporary research focuses on studying our own institutions.

The 2008 financial crisis is a good example of this. Anthropologists looked into the existing banking culture, and the attitudes towards risk and financial product development. See Karen Ho’s 2009 book, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street.

There is a saying within our field: anthropology seeks to make familiar things strange and the strange familiar. It is about covering and reflecting on the unspoken norms. It helps to shed light on aspects of your work.

For example, the other day I was teaching a biology class and we talked about human cells, and the use of these cells for scientific research. We discussed the ethical questions: What does it mean to use human cells? What is the culture in a lab that shapes how scientists engage with the social, ethical side of using human tissue samples?  What does informed consent look like, and is access to the benefits of scientific advancement (e.g, Covid vaccines) equitable? I believe these interdisciplinary conversation are extremely valuable.

For me it comes back to the idea of perspectives. When you grow up you become accustomed to things, but that is not the only way of doing things. It comes down to the value of each person’s experiences, and to be open to understanding that your perspective is not the sole perspective.

In the last 10 years, the quality of political debate and civic discourse has changed. There is greater polarization between political groups in both the US and the Netherlands. There are important challenges around access to information, the difference between a free exchange of ideas and hate speech and increasing partisanship rather than collaboration.

Just try and give things a chance! Talk to as many people as you can. Ask questions. Submit that application and see what might happen.