2nd Lieutenant Olivia Skelton ’23, Military Intelligence

Olivia, a Geography major from Convoy, Ohio, earned the 2023 Harold A. Gottesman ’50 Family Award in Atrocity Studies for her paper, “Destruction of Cultural Heritage As a Genocidal Act: A Case Study of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict,” which she presented at the 2023 JSAMAPS. Olivia’s research explored the history of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, considering whether the destruction of cultural heritage should be considered a genocidal act, as the loss of tangible cultural heritage may lead to the loss of intangible cultural identity and eventually the people as a whole. In addition to the Gottesman Award, Olivia also earned the Geography Department’s 2023 Best Projects Day Project award. In XH415, she was an enthusiastic contributor to the Ukraine Situation Assessment for the United States’ European Command region described in the March 2023 newsletter.  Olivia will go to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, home of the Military Intelligence Branch, to attend the Basic Officer Leadership Course (BOLC). Upon completion, she will report to her first duty station at Fort Wainwright, Alaska.