Ben Kiernan is Whitney Griswold Professor of History at Yale University. From 1994-2015 he was founding Director of the Genocide Studies Program, and from 2010-2015, Chair of the Council on Southeast Asia Studies. His books include "How Pol Pot Came to Power" (1985); "The Pol Pot Regime" (1996); "Genocide and Resistance in Southeast Asia" (2007); and "Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur" (2007). For thirty years he documented the crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime; he founded the Cambodian Genocide Program, which uncovered the archives of the Khmer Rouge secret police, detailed the case for an international tribunal, and won many awards. His book "Việt Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present" was released in 2017.

A long-range environmental history of Cambodia, the first comprehensive study of the interactions between the Khmer people, their land, and their neighbors, including ethnic minority groups. It examines the evidence from prehistoric times to the present of the links between Cambodia’s inhabitants and the ecological landscape of the Mekong and Tonle Sap River basins and surrounding uplands. It assesses their places in Southeast Asian and global transformations, using new approaches from environmental, comparative and world history to illuminate Cambodia’s cultural, economic and political life.

More info: www.history.yale.edu

Ben Kiernan was in residence at the Camargo Foundation in 2017, as part of the Core Program.