Margaret Comer’s research focuses on the legacy of mass repression, Soviet and post-Soviet ways of commemoration and heritage creation, Holocaust commemoration and heritage creation, mourning and memory, and disputes about the past. She is particularly interested in how societies after periods of repression represent violence, suffering, perpetration, the position of the indifferent bystander, and victimhood at sites associated with mass violence. The overarching goal is to analyze how the heritage of past violence can be instrumentally exploited to avoid confronting that past, as well as how it can be weaponized to fuel contemporary violence.