This line of research explores the role of rivers in the dynamics of mass violence. It is part of the habilitation à diriger des recherches, devoted to the uses and representations of the Dniester during the Holocaust.

Taking the case of the Dniester—a border river, a site of shootings and drownings, and a point of deportation—the aim is to examine the specific modalities of certain massacres and the ways in which these geographical features contributed both to practices of violence and to their narration in testimonies and local memories.

This reflection develops within a transdisciplinary and comparative perspective, seeking to consider the role of rivers in other contexts of extreme violence, notably during the Armenian genocide, where many Armenian deportees were executed on the banks of the Euphrates and thrown into the river, or during the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, where rivers were both vectors of death and sites for the erasure of bodies.

By combining a historical approach, spatial analysis, and anthropological questions concerning the relationship between water, bodies, and violence, this research aims to contribute to a better understanding of the material and symbolic configurations underlying mass killings.