Rachel Hughes

Rachel Hughes is an Associate Professor in Human Geography in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences within the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne. She completed her Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne in 2007, with a thesis entitled Fielding genocide: post-1979 Cambodia and the geopolitics of memory. Her research specializations encompass public memory, justice-seeking processes, and reparation, with a particular emphasis on late twentieth-century Cambodia. Drawing from critical legal studies, memory studies, and human geography, Hughes investigates sites of atrocity tourism such as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), transitional justice mechanisms, transnational solidarity campaigns from 1979-1989, and the applicability of reparative framings in settler colonial contexts like Australia. Her methodologies include long-term ethnographic observation, interviews, and archival research. She is a founding member of the Human Geography Lab at the University of Melbourne and has supervised more than thirty student projects across cultural geography, political geography, and critical development geography.

Hughes's career at the University of Melbourne has progressed from lecturer to senior lecturer, senior research fellow, and now associate professor. She has made significant contributions through key publications, including the co-edited volume Emotion and the Contemporary Museum: Development of a Geographically-Informed Approach to Visitor Evaluation (Springer), journal articles such as Dutiful tourism: Encountering the Cambodian genocide (Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 2008), Ordinary theatre and extraordinary law at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2015), Scales of justice: “international standards” and “local ownership” at a hybrid tribunal (Antipode, 2022), and The Bangsokol Requiem, affective intensification, and memory activation (Memory Studies, 2024). Additional notable works include Left justified: The early campaign for an international law response to Khmer Rouge crimes (Political Geography, 2020) and The Projectification of Reparation (Journal of Human Rights Practice, 2021). Hughes holds editorial positions as Associate Editor of Environment & Planning C: Politics & Space, editorial board member of Cultural Geographies, and former Associate Editor of Postcolonial Studies. Her scholarship has advanced understandings of legal geography, geopolitics of memory, and victim participation in international tribunals.

Professional Email: hughesr@unimelb.edu.au