Dr. Sanderijn Cels is a scholar of collective memory and public leadership whose work examines institutional responses to past wrongs. Her research and teaching focus on the dilemmas public leaders face when confronting painful pasts, with particular attention to the strategic, institutional, and operational challenges involved in translating moral claims into public action—for example, through apologies, reparations, reforms, and commemorative practices.
More broadly, her work engages questions of social change and strategy, especially how change agents navigate resistance, mobilize support, and pursue reform in complex institutional settings. She has developed an extensive body of teaching cases and brings deep expertise in case-based, discussion-led teaching. In addition to her academic work, she has advised senior public officials and practitioners on challenges involved in addressing complex social and institutional legacies.
She teaches at Harvard Kennedy School, where she has developed courses on reckoning with history and social change. She holds a PhD in Social Sciences from Loughborough University and a master’s degree in History from Leiden University.