Emily abrams ansari
Emily Abrams Ansari was trained at Durham, Oxford, and Harvard Universities and she is Associate Professor of Music History at Western University. She is working with our team to explore the role of music during the civil war. Her research to date has been focused on music and politics across the Americas. Her book The Sound of a Superpower: Musical Americanism and the Cold War (OUP, 2018) considers how the quest to create a uniquely American classical music was shaped by the Cold War. She is a recipient of the Kurt Weill Prize and the Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for her article publications and has also received the Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award.
ADRIANA ALAS
Due to the forced displacement of her family because of civil war violence in the early 1980s in El Salvador, Adriana Alas has devoted part of her research to analyzing the impacts and interpretations of El Salvador’s war, especially in Chalatenango. She recently completed her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at “El Colegio de Michoacán” in Mexico, an institution where she also studied her master’s degree in the same specialty. Her dissertation develops an investigation into the value of war memories and their negotiation between generations born after the civil war in Chalatenango. Her dissertation was supported by CONACYT, CLACSO, and The Wenner-Gren Foundation. Her academic performance has led her to work with several human rights groups as both a researcher and a social activist. She will begin a multi-year appointment as a postdoctoral scholar at Western University in 2021.
Juan Andrés Bello
Juan Andrés Bello is a documentary researcher and producer, born in Venezuela, living and working in Canada. Juan Andrés was the producer of ‘The Chalatenango Massacres’, a project supported by the Canada Council for the Arts (Explore and Create program) and the London Arts Council, in collaboration with the Sumpul Association (2018-2021). The project documented the massacres that were perpetrated in Chalatenango (El Salvador) during the early years of the war, based on testimonials of victims and survivors. He also produced ‘Norberto Amaya [Songwriter]’ (2017) in collaboration with ‘Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador’, and designed the project’s website. As a documentarian, his portfolio includes independent films that have been exhibited at international film festivals, and projects commissioned by A&E, The Biography Channel and HBO Latin America, as well as digital resources and exhibitions for museums and cultural institutions. He also teaches media production at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies – Western University (London, Ontario).
DEANNA BEFUS
Deanna Befus, RN, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing at Western University. She is interested in the ways that healthcare and social systems perpetuate inequity, particularly for women. She has worked on multi-disciplinary, inter-institutional teams of systems scientists, health policy researchers, and anti-racism community organizers to adapt complex systems models into trauma- and violence-informed data collection, assessment, and implementation tools. She co-authored a Medicaid policy brief advocating for increased supports for people with intersecting experiences of marginalization that she presented to state legislators and has since been used to inform Medicaid reform efforts in North Carolina. She is a Registered Nurse and a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner.
TOM BELTON
Tom Belton has been Head of Archives and Special Collections for Western Libraries since 2019. He has been an archivist at Western since 2005. Prior to that time, he worked as an Archives Advisor for the Archives Association of Ontario. Tom’s research interests include the history of documents and records, and the intersections of archives in time and space with physical and social sciences such as Meteorology and Anthropology.
María de Lourdes Calero Santos
Lourdes Calero is a ceramist and teacher by profession, and she has a Bachelor of Plastic Arts (Ceramic Option) at the University of El Salvador (UES). She has also completed UES’s Pedagogical Training Course for Professionals. Additionally, she has completed courses in "Writing with Emphasis on Scientific Articles" from the Central American University "José Simeón Cañas" (UCA), "Humanities and Social Sciences Research" at the Graduate School, Faculty of Sciences and Humanities at the University of El Salvador, and "Technology and Ceramic Science" accredited by the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. She currently serves as the Coordinator and professor of the Bachelor of Plastic Arts, Ceramic Option at the School of Arts, Faculty of Science and Humanities, University of El Salvador. Lourdes devotes her time to research, ceramic artistic expression, and consulting projects aimed at technical training in ceramic artisan communities in the country.
Susana Caxaj
Susana Caxaj is an assistant professor of Nursing at Western University. Her research and teaching focuses on global health, including: industrial impacts on migrant health; Indigenous health, health equity, and cultural safety; belonging, inclusion, and service access among immigrant populations; participatory action research; social determinants of health and intersectionality; relational and Indigenous ways of knowing.
EUGENIA CANAS
Eugenia Canas, PhD, is Post-doctoral Associate in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University in London, Ontario. She is a Research Trainee with the Gender, Trauma and Violence Knowledge Incubator, working with Dr. Nadine Wathen and Women & Gender Equality Canada (WAGE) to mobilize knowledge on gender-based violence. Eugenia’s doctoral research used a health-information science perspective to investigate the inclusion of lived-experience knowledge in the design of mental health services for youth. Past and ongoing research collaborations include roles with the Centre for Research on Health Equity and Social Inclusion, a London Poverty Reduction Fund grant evaluating the effectiveness of a Housing First Approach, a SSHRC Partnership Development grant investigating the impact of narrative evidence upon policy change, and a CIHR Team grant focused on the impacts of structural violence upon youth wellbeing.
ALAIN CARRETERO
Alain is an ethno-botanist who explores traditional knowledge and use of plants, and people’s perception and experience of interrelated social and environmental challenges. He has 15 years of professional experience in designing, organizing, implementing, analyzing, documenting and communicating cross-disciplinary research and development projects. He has worked as an analyst on the interface between social-environmental vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive nature management. His skills and knowledge have been developed through experience with projects in South America, and he has university training in both Bolivia and Denmark. As part of the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador Project, Alain is working with Dr. Vladimir Pacheco on the recovery of traditional knowledge and local economic reconstruction.
FERNANDO CHACON
Fernando is a community social psychologist from El Salvador. He received his Master’s in Community Psychology from the University of Chile. His research interests are located in the fields of memories of the armed conflict, intergenerational education (especially communities in Chalatenango), the psychosocial effects of war (including reparation, mental health, and psychosocial trauma). Apart from research, he is interested in psychosocial interventions from alternative, such as theater of the oppressed, art therapy techniques, and mindfulness. Currently, he works as a Research Professor for the Department of Psychology and Public Health of the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in El Salvador.
THERESA DENGER
Theresa Denger has a Ph.D. in Theology. She studied Catholic Theology at the Albert-Ludwig University in Friburg (Germany) as well as at the Central American University José Simeón Cañas (El Salvador). From 2012 to 2014 Theresa worked as professor at the Lutheran University of El Salvador. From 2016 to 2019 she worked as investigator for Pro-Búsqueda in El Salvador as part of the cooperative program ¨Civil Service for Peace¨ (AGIAMONDO). Currently, as part of AGIAMONDO, Theresa is also a Professor working on Historical Memory and Education on the legacy of Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez for the Master’s program in Latin American Theology at the José Simeón Cañas Central American University (El Salvador).
ALEJANDRO LENING DÍAZ GÓMEZ
Alejandro is a Salvadoran lawyer and notary. He graduated from the José Simeón Cañas Central American University (UCA). In the past, he worked for the Office of Legal Guardianship of the Archbishopric of San Salvador, and he is currently part of the legal team at Tutela Legal guardianship team Dr. María Julia Hernández. He represents survivors in some of the most emblematic cases of Historical Memory before Salvadoran and international courts, such as the El Sumpul Massacre and the assassination of Bishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, as well as collaborating in books, magazines and research on Human Rights. He has written articles on Historical Memory in Diaro Co-Latino and the weekly El Independiente and Voces de El Salvador.
CHRISTIAN FIGUEROA
Christian Figueroa is a Salvadoran video producer and filmmaker currently based in San Francisco California with a broad portfolio in documentary, non-profit, and commercial media production. Christian has been working collaboratively with civil war survivors in El Salvador for the last decade, and he is working to complete a documentary focused on women's experiences during and after the war. Christian holds an MFA in Cinema Production from San Francisco State University and he was a 2019 BAVC MediaMaker Fellow. He served as volunteer facilitating documentary film workshops in El Salvador and most recently, as instructor of video production to low-income youth in San Francisco, California.
HAROLD FALLON
Harold Fallon is a Belgian civil engineer architect from the UCLouvain in Belgium, who also studied at UNAM (Mexico) and KULeuven (Belgium). After graduating in 2001, he co-founded the architecture office AgwA in Brussels, working on a wide variety of public buildings for collectivities, infrastructures and public spaces. Their work is published and exhibited internationally. With his thesis “Metarbitrariness : AgwA, an architecture of practice”, he obtained a PhD in architecture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2013, supported by the KULeuven where he was teaching and researching since 2007. Since 2018, he is Senior Academic Staff at the faculty of architecture of the KULeuven where he leads the “Oversize” academic design office. He develops a research through design practice program. He married Evelia Macal, is fluent in Spanish and has a profound knowledge of the Salvadoran context.
JOSÉ GARCÍA
Originally from El Salvador, Dr. José Garcia came to Canada in 1984 and completed his graduate engineering studies at the University of Toronto (M.A.Sc.-1986 and Ph. D-1995). He went on to complete an MBA at Ryerson University (2008). He is a member of Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO) and for many years, worked as a researcher with the Centre for Advanced Diffusion Technologies of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department at the University of Toronto. He co-authored several patents and published numerous articles in scientific journals. Currently, Dr. Garcia is a Program Manager with the Chang School of Continuing Education at Ryerson University. As a manager of the Green Economy bridging program, he provides advice and support to newcomer professionals to get them ready for the Canadian workforce. Dr. Garcia also teaches strategic project management and Energy Management at Ryerson and University of Toronto Schools of Continuing Studies, respectively. Dr. Garcia volunteer work includes: chairman of the board for Futurewatch environment and educational partners and a board member of the Salvadoran Canadian Association.
Amanda Grzyb
Amanda is Associate Professor of Information and Media Studies at Western University. Her research and teaching interests focus on genocide studies, state violence, memorialization, social movements, homelessness, and media and social justice. In 2016, her research shifted to El Salvador, and she now serves as the Project Director for Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador. Through this research initiative, she works closely with Asociación Sumpul, Salvadoran civil society organizations, artists, scholars, and other collaborators to document and commemorate the history of the Salvadoran Civil War from the perspective of local communities. She is committed to participatory and decolonial methodologies that produce accessible knowledge mobilization outcomes, including photo exhibitions, community history workshops, survivor testimonies, community-designed memorials, and multi-media civil war memory projects. She is editor of two books: The World and Darfur (MQUP 2009) and Conflict in the Nuba Mountains: From Genocide by Attrition to the Contemporary Crisis in Sudan (with Sam Totten, Routledge 2014), and author of numerous articles and book chapters about the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and homelessness. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Duke University.
BERNARD HAMMOND
Bernie Hammond was born in Gaspé, Québec in 1942. He earned his PhD in Sociology in 1975 from York University with a specialization in the sociology of health and illness. He continued teaching, research and writing in this area throughout his career but in later years became interested in Latin American studies and specifically Canadian corporate and mining interests in South and Central America. Bernie taught at King's University College, UWO from 1975 until 2015 where he also founded and directed the Centre for Social Concern, a centre for education around issues of international development and social justice. In 2002 he became the founding coordinator of the Social Justice and Peace Studies program, a 4 year BA program offering students the opportunity to do experiential learning locally and overseas while completing their degree. For 12 years he supervised all students engaged in experiential learning in Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala and El Salvador. He retired in September 2015 but continues voluntary activities locally with the Unity Project for the Relief of Homelessness in London and more generally in the Canadian context. He has demonstrated a longstanding solidarity with various countries in Latin America and continues to travel frequently to the Dominican Republic, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
DAVID HEAP
David Heap is associate professor of French Studies and the Interfaculty Linguistics Program and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Western Ontario. His publications in French, Spanish and English, including his 2000 monograph “La variation grammaticale en géolinguistique: les pronoms sujet en roman central,”, mostly focus on nonstandard morphology and Romance dialectology. His interest in variable pronoun systems in Spanish led him to uncover unpublished dialect fieldwork notebooks from a vast dialect survey project begun during the Spanish Republic (1930-1936).Since 2007 he has been part of an international project, coordinated by Spain’s research council, the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, to publish those materials from the Linguistic Atlas of the Iberian Peninsula (Atlas Lingüístico de la Península Ibérica or ALPI). In that ongoing internet publication (http://alpi.csic.es/en), his responsibilities include the English pages in the project website. In the 1980s, he worked as an interpreter-translator in Central America and with refugees from that region in Canada, and he remains an active volunteer with human rights organizations, where his contributions include subtitling online videos in French and Spanish.
JUAN CARLOS JÍMENEZ
Juan Carlos Jimenez is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto – St. George Campus. His research interests focus on climate change vulnerabilities and adaptation in Central America, and their impacts on rural livelihoods. Prior to his graduate studies, Juan Carlos worked on community development projects in Nicaragua, and received his Master’s in Environmental Studies at York University, where his research explored the application of grassroots renewable energy projects in Nicaraguan rural communities as an adaptation strategy to climate change. Juan Carlos has volunteered consistently in Chalatenango, El Salvador, as a translator for medical brigades, English teacher, and as an international observer.
RONIT JINICH
Ronit Jinich, M.E.S, is a therapist in private practice working at the interface of Dharma practice and psychotherapy. Her mind-body approach is informed by her exploration of these disciplines and traverses various schools of thought as well as communities of practice for over 15 years. Born in México, she is fluent in Spanish, English, and Hebrew and has a diverse academic background spanning from literature to performing arts to Gestalt Therapy. Ronit has a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies with a special focus on social transformation from York University, which also informs her practice. Ronit is the Manager of Education & Lead Trainor for Mindfulness Without Borders, a leading provider of evidence-based programs on secular mindfulness and social-emotional intelligence to youth, educators, health, and corporate professionals in communities around the world. Ronit is a faculty member of the Applied Mindfulness Meditation Certificate Program at the University of Toronto and she is the founder of The Living Room, a community dedicated to exploring the principles and practice of mindfulness in everyday life.
BEATRIZ JUÁREZ
Beatriz Juárez is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University. Her research interests include anthropology of the state, race and racialization processes, ethno-racial social movements and the state in Latin America, black feminism, African diaspora studies and memory studies. She studies the politics of memory and how social organizations and community members engage in collective processes of recovering their past and mobilize local historical memories as political strategies to create a shared history of resistance and struggles against national oblivion, political oppression and social injustice. Her main research involves a political ethnography among Afro women’s organizations in the Ecuadorian Andes, that analyses their political practices and antiracist and antisexist discourses, in order to show how they are fighting against multiple forms of oppression while challenging state exclusionary racist public policies. She is working with our team to create a historical memory book series on the cultural landscapes and memories of the communities that made up the municipalities of Las Vueltas, San José Las Flores, Arcatao, Nueva Trinidad, and Suchitoto before and after the civil war in El Salvador.
MICHAEL KATCHABAW
Mike Katchabaw is associate professor of Computer Science at Western University, where his research focuses on game design and technologies, adaptive game systems, virtual and augmented reality, storytelling support and content analysis for video games. As a member of the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador team, Mike will be leading the development of a pilot phone app for use on historical memory trails.
GRZEGORZ KWIATKOWSKI
Grzegorz Kwiatkowski is a poet and the vocalist and guitarist for the Polish band, Trupa Trupa. Kwiatkowski’s poems explore the conflicted pasts of Nazi-occupied Central and South-Eastern Europe, and also the paradoxes of contemporary cases of genocide. His minimalist poems have been perceived as quasi-testimonies, full of passion, terror, and disgust, provocative and lyrical utterances delivered by the killers and the dead. Often compared to Sonic Youth and Radiohead, his band, Trupa Trupa, was formed in Gandsk in 2009. Their sound is described by The Guardian, as “music that blends off-kilter melodies, dense instrumentation and lyrical explorations of the darkest side of the human condition.” Trupa Trupa has released 3 albums internationally. They have been featured in line-ups of a number of significant festivals worldwide, including: Primavera Sound, Desert Daze, Rockaway Beach, SXSW and Iceland Airwaves, and they also took part in a legendary NPR Tiny Desk session in 2020.
EVELIA MACAL
Evelia Macal is a Salvadoran architect trained at Universidad Centroamericana José Simeon Cañas (UCA) in El Salvador. Her thesis explored the use of adobe for rural eco-touristic development. She h also worked as a researcher on the ground water rarefaction for the city planning service of the Metropolitan Area of San Salvador (OPAMSS). In 2001, she graduated as an urbanist at the UCLouvain in Belgium with a dissertation on the preservation of the forests around the Salvadoran capital. She has collaborated with the CNCD and Médecins du Monde NGO’s in Brussels, and occasionally, she leads workshops on architecture and urbanism at UCA. At present, she is project manager for the cultural buildings of the ministry of the French community of Belgium. As an architect and as a ceramist, she is interested in small scale production processes and the contemporary social and artistic potential of vernacular construction materials.
Arlene MacDougall
Arlene MacDougall is a psychiatrist and an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at Western University. She is the Director of Global MINDS @ Western, an Interdisciplinary Development Initiative (IDI) focused on the development of knowledge, skills, and supports for students and faculty to tackle one of the world’s most pressing and wicked problems: the global burden of mental disorders. At Global MINDS, transdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder approaches are utilized to catalyze the development, implementation, evaluation, and mobilization of disruptive and sustainable solutions that reduce the burden of mental disorders and related issues in low-resource settings such as East Africa and marginalized communities within Canada. Dr. MacDougall is currently leading a multi-institutional collaboration based in Kenya involving the Africa Mental Health Foundation and several Canadian university partners known as Community Recovery Achieved Through Entrepreneurism (CREATE) (www.createkenya.com). CREATE is a promising new paradigm for promoting and supporting recovery from serious mental illness in low-income settings that involves the development of a work integrated social enterprise coupled with a low-cost Psychosocial Rehabilitation Toolkit.
Alfredo Marroquín
Alfredo Marroquín is an educator, Psychotherapist and professor of Sociology at Fanshawe College and has presented in Canada, USA, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Cuba and Italy. His research interests include the Decolonization of Trauma, Empowerment, Healing Interventions, Historical Memory Politics, Social Movements, Democracy and Civic Participation. Alfredo has been engaged in the El Salvador’s democratization process since the late 70s and is very interested in participatory, action-oriented research where the holistic relationship between historical memory, collective trauma, and resilience with the purpose to develop appropriate and culturally based interventions for collective healing in rural El Salvador is explored. He holds a B.A in Sociology, B.Ed., a Teaching Certificate and an M.Ed. in Counselling Psychology from Western University, Post Graduate studies in Sociology in La Universidad de La Habana, Cuba, as well as extensive training in Grief and Bereavement, Narrative Exposure Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, and Conflict Resolution.
MIGUEL MIRA MIRA
Miguel Mira Mira was born in the Canton Vainillas, Municipality of Carrizal, Department of Chalatenango, El Salvador. He graduated with the Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Arts, University of El Salvador (UES). Currently, he works as coordinator and teacher of the sculpture specialty at the UES School of Arts. Nominated for Best Sculptor 2015 (Gala de las Artes, Canal 10). He received an honorable mention in the Ninth Miniature Painting Salon (Salcajá, Guatemala 2019) and he is a member of the cultural magazine CÓDICES 3. Miguel has made individual exhibitions such as Tree man. Tree woman (Sculpture) (French Alliance 2013) and Expressions (Balance Restaurant 2017) as well as a variety of national and international group exhibitions in venues such as Vessica Gallery (Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, 2018), Blue Gallery (Mazatenango, Guatemala, 2019), Museum of Salcajá (Guatemala 2019) and Pink Art (New York 2019) among many others.
Thomas Montulet
Thomas Montulet (1990) is a Dutch civil engineer architect. In 2013, he graduated with a Masters in Engineering: Architecture – Urban Design and Architecture from Ghent University. During his Masters, he spent a year of studies at the Technical University of Munich. His thesis, entitled “Thinking, speaking, designing: On the vocabulary of forms of the architect” won a faculty prize. Since then, he has been active as an architect in the city of Brussels for aaa – architectuuratelier ambiorix and AgwA architecture office. He teaches first year architecture students at UCL-LOCI Brussels, and he is currently undertaking a PhD at the same university on the topic of transgression and funerary architecture using critical writing and model making as his academic tools.
AMANDA OLIVER
Amanda Oliver is an Associate Archivist at Western University. She holds a Master of Library and Information Science, with a concentration in archives, from McGill University and is currently enrolled in the Master of Arts, Preventive Conservation program at Northumbria University. She has worked in Western Libraries for almost five years, with previous experience in archival institutions in the government and not-for-profit sectors. Her current work focus is on acquiring, providing access to and preserving collections, with a particular interest in identifying materials at risk and disaster planning. Her research interests include archivists’ competencies and preventative conservation initiatives. She has presented papers at provincial, national and international conferences and has published in Archives and Manuscripts, Archival Issues, and Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies.
MORGAN POTEET
Morgan Poteet is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada. Morgan’s research and teaching interests are in the areas of Migration, Critical Border Studies, Youth, Criminalization, Racialization, Identity, and Belonging. His current research uses qualitative and arts-based approaches such as Photovoice and Digital Storytelling to explore social memory and current realities among Salvadoran youth in Canada.
VLADIMIR PACHECO CUEVA
Vladimir Pacheco is currently Associate Professor in Governance and coordinator of the International Studies program at the Department of Global Studies in the School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Denmark. His current research interests include analyzing the governance mechanisms, economic policy prescriptions and socio-economic impacts of resource extraction Latin America and beyond. Before this position, Vladimir held senior roles in Australia with the Foundation for Development Cooperation, the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining and consulting firm WorleyParsons. His latest report is the result of a research project co-produced with environmental NGOs in El Salvador and is titled “Alternativas Económicas a la Minería Metálica en El Salvador: Una mirada al departamento de Cabañas a la luz de los Objetivos del Desarrollo Sostenible”.
Felipe Quetzalcoatl Quintanilla
Felipe Quintanilla is Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at Western University, where his research and teaching cover a wide range of topics and genres, including the Salvadoran Post Civil memory and oral history; gender and sexuality in contemporary Latin American cinema and literature; U.S. Latin@ representation in popular media; and Spanish-English translation. His creative works have been included in several print anthologies as well as in various online publications, and he is currently writing a novel entitled La vida en Canadá (Life in Canada). Born in Mexico City to a Mexican mother and a Salvadoran father, Dr. Quintanilla emigrated to Canada at the age of ten, and he received his Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies from Western University in 2012.
Marjorie Ratcliffe
Marjorie Ratcliffe earned her PhD at the University of Toronto in 1981. After working in many different universities in Canada, Professor Ratcliffe joined the University of Western Ontario in 1990 as an Associate Professor and was promoted to full Professor in 2012. During her very active career, Professor Ratcliffe has published 4 books and over 20 articles and is a well-known scholar in Medieval and Eighteenth-Century Hispanic Studies. Her works have been a great contribution on the role of women in Medieval Hispanic culture as well as transatlantic colonial theatre. She also published a collection of Spanish Civil War orphans. For almost 50 years, she has been a passionate teacher and has taught several generations of undergraduate and graduate students. Her students have appreciated her great love for Hispanic culture. Finally, Professor Ratcliffe has made her contributions to the creation and development of the University of Western Ontario Faculty Association (UWOFA), for which she received the Canadian Association of University Teachers Dedicated Service Award in 2008 and the Allan Heinicke Memorial Service Award in 2017, to recognize outstanding contributions and achievement in financial, technical or policy development on behalf of UWOFA. Professor Ratcliffe is now retired but continues to research and write.
ismaEl ANTONIO sanchez FIGUEROA
Ismael Sánchez is a Mechanical Engineer with a degree from the Central American University José Simeón Cañas of El Salvador. Ismael also holds a Master’s Degree in Energy Resources from the University of Pittsburgh, where he attended as a Fulbright Scholar. He was the Founder and Professor of the Department of Energy Sciences of the Central American University José Simeón Cañas He has published and directed research on energy policy, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and climate change. As a senior Advisor (2003-2014) of the Energy and Environment Alliance with Central America, Ismael has also worked on initiatives of the Governments of Finland, Austria and the European Union whose main objective was to promote the use of renewable energy in the region.
raksha sule
Raksha Sule is the Co-Founder and Chief Knowledge Officer of The Global MINDS Collective, which catalyzes social innovations with and for communities to improve mental wellbeing in global contexts. She holds an MSc in Global Health from McMaster University, Canada, and is pursuing an EdM in International Educational Development from Teachers College, Columbia University, USA. Raksha is interested in the holistic reintegration of war-affected youth and former child soldiers into schools and communities and leverages a multi-dimensional approach at the intersection of education in emergencies, mental health & psychosocial support and social innovation. She has also consulted for and collaborated with organizations to address educational and/or psychosocial challenges globally (e.g. in Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Lebanon). Raksha joins Memoria Sobreviviente as a collaborator to support the mental health & healing operational arm.
LIZ SUTHERLAND
Liz Sutherland is the GIS Specialist for Western Libraries. She graduated in 2016 from Western University with a B.Sc. in Geographic Information Science. Before starting at Western Libraries, Liz worked as a GIS professional at a geoscience research library. Her role at Western is to connect researchers to the data, software and expertise they need to incorporate GIS in their projects. She works on larger-scale research projects such as the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador to support the creation of digital mapping products.
ULISES UNDA
Ulises Unda is a PhD candidate in Art and Visual Culture at Western University, Canada. Received a MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts at Alfred University, N.Y, EEUU; and a Master in Cultural Studies at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Ecuador. Artist-in-Residency program (1999 and 2000) at the Rijksacademie van Beeldenden Kunsten, Amsterdam, Holland. Through his recent artistic activities, Unda develops new perspectives on his sustained interest in the subject of cultural difference, while fostering dialogical and collaborative endeavors based on reflexive practices of sound/listening. His artwork has been exhibited extensively, including, Loop Video Art Festival, Barcelona, Spain; Museum Lu Xun Academy of Fine Art, Shenyang, China; Queens Museum of Art, NY, EEUU; Center for the Development of the Visual Arts, Havana, Cuba; Curator of the exhibition “Contemporary Art in Ecuador”, Museum Camilo Egas, 2007. Awarded the Ecuadorian national prize Mariano Aguilera Malta in 2002.