Samantha Rommel
Samantha Rommel chose the online master’s in Law, Justice & Culture because the accessible online coursework allows her to continue working while pursuing her education in order to become a legal anthropologist.
Rommel is an Ohio University alumna who earned a B.A. in Anthropology, along with a certificate in museum studies, from the College of Arts & Sciences in 2015. She is currently enrolled as an online student in the M.A. in Law, Justice & Culture, which has 19 students, both online and on campus, who are learning about law and society studies.
Rommel had been looking into different graduate programs at Ohio University after she began working for the Office of Global Opportunities here at Ohio University. She was deeply involved with the Center for Law, Justice & Culture and stayed connected with the center throughout her time working for university.
As an undergraduate student, Rommel spent her time on campus mainly focused on the intersections of conflict and memory. Rommel explored these interests through the inaugural Northern Ireland program in 2013, where she discovered her passion for ethnographic fieldwork.
A year and a half later, Rommel traveled to Cambodia with four other students and Dr. Haley Duschinski as a part of the first Law, Justice & Culture externship cohort, where she researched the construction of memory about the Cambodian genocide through their museums. That research informed her senior thesis, “Voices of Transition: Cultural Productions of Memory and Justice at Cambodian Museums.”
Now she remains interested in conflict studies and is interested in memorialization, international law and peace, and environmental peacebuilding. Rommel hopes to research connections between conflict, memory and the environment in Cambodia or Colombia.
So far, her favorite course in the program has been LJC 6965: Legal Practice Workshop with Larry Hayman. It was the course content that Rommel was the most unfamiliar with, and she felt as though she was able to learn a new skillset.
“It peaked my interest enough in law school that I am considering taking the LSAT this summer!” she said.
“These courses have pushed my writing and analysis to become more critical,” she said when asked about the most valuable thing she’s learned through the master’s program. “It can be a difficult to analyze research or laws critically as undergraduate when you feel like you don’t have the field-specific knowledge. Now I feel like I can push back, question, and engage more deeply with the material.”
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