Julia Barnes is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology. She earned her Master's degree in Sociocultural Anthropology from UVA in 2018 and her bachelor's degree in French and Italian Studies from Dickinson College in 2014.

Her research project, "Waiting for Antigone: Interment as Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Slovenia," examines a unique peace project: the reconstitution of the individual through applying forensic science and democratic bureaucracy to an undifferentiated mass of human remains from the Second World War. The individual is reconstituted on two levels: first, symbolically, from anonymous victim of Communism to valued citizen of a new democratic republic; and second, physically, as bone fragments and a pulp of human remains are accorded dignified interment. Julia's research is based on twelve months of fieldwork based in Slovenia.