This project seeks to foster dialogues among Australia and Latin America on difficult memory-making from the ‘Southern’ perspectives of Latin American migrants, artists, activists and scholars.

Este proyecto busca fomentar diálogos entre Australia y Latinoamérica sobre la construcción de memoria desde las perspectivas del “Sur” de migrantes, artistas, activistas y académicos latinoamericanos.

READ FIRST ACADEMIC PUBLICATION ON THE PROJECT: ‘Memories I want to remember, memories I want to forget’: Desire-centred Memory Work with Latin American Migrants in Australia: https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2023.2200924

In collaboration with Yo Soy Collective we run a zine-making workshop with migrants (predominantly from Latin America) at Blak Dot Gallery (Melbourne) in November 2022 . Participants learned how to create a zine that tells a story and captures memories, while also having the opportunity to participate in conversations around memories, lived experiences, politics, and culture. Thanks Paula Muraca and the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation for the support.

This seminar was on the Colombian truth process after the historic Peace Accord in 2016, and the Truth Commission for the Clarification of Truth and No Repetition created in 2017. The seminar featured two speakers from the Truth Commission: Commissioner Maria Patricia Tobón Yagari and Alejandra Londoño.

Moderated by: Laura Rodriguez Castro

The seminar was conducted with Spanish-English interpretation.

Affect, Knowledge and Embodiment: A Critical Feminist Arts/Research Workshop Series (and zine!) brought to you by Dr Ashleigh Watson, Dr Laura Rodriguez Castro, and Samantha Trayhurn.

In this workshop we examined and experimented with the cultural and political potential of ‘memory through art’ in geographical enquiry. We facilitated creative practice, discussion, collaboration, and produced a Special Issue of Australian Geographer (2022).

Keynote Speakers:

Virgelina Chará is a human rights defender, educator, embroidery artist and protest music composer from Colombia.

Artist Libby Harward is a descendant of the Ngugi people of Mulgumpin (Moreton Island) in the Quandamooka (Moreton Bay Area).

Engages with decolonial feminisms as a process that is alive and active, emphasising the openness of identities and the entanglement of ways of thinking

Addresses decolonial praxis through exploring the author's personal and reflexive stance, and a commitment to unlearn in order to learn other worlds

Present rural women’s struggles as enacting other worlds where violences against territories and body-lands are confronted

“This book vividly demonstrates why Latin American feminisms have become the most vibrant arena of critical thought and struggle. Building on a careful analysis of women’s territorial struggles against territorial dispossession and extractivist projects, the author powerfully narrates ‘the epistemic force of place.’ This farsighted book should be of great interest to students and activists in those fields dealing with issues of gender, environment, development, rurality, and globalization.”

Arturo Escobar, Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA, author of Encountering Development and Designs for the Pluriverse.

Book review by Julia Margaret Zulver in Gender, Place & Culture: https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2021.1932971

Book review by Luftun Nahar Datta in Journal of Intercultural Studies: https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2021.1988538.

Book review by Elena Tjandra in Journal of Latin American Geography https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/jlag/vol21/iss1/12/

The project ‘Advancing Peace and Conflict Studies from The Ground: Women’s Oral Testimonies and Historical Memory in Colombia’ conducted in late 2019 and early 2020 in Colombia involved 12 in-depth interviews with women social leaders (Cali and Bogotá) and visits to three key centralized memory and peace institutions: the Memory House Museum in Medellin, the Memory Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in Bogotá, and the National Centre for Historical Memory in Bogotá.

Read first article here.

In this webinar (held on March 10, 2021) we interrogate the ways in which colonial legacies of gender and sexuality are often brought about in cultural heritage institutions, spaces and dialogues.

*2020, 2021: Professor Barbara Pini (Griffith University), ‘Globalising rural life narratives’, Arts, Education and Law Grant.

See latest article here.

* 2019, 2020: Dr Sarah Casey, Associate Professor Sandy O’Sullivan, Dr Gail Crimmins and Dr Karen Sutherland (University of Sunshine Coast), ‘Discovering and supporting the digital literacy and business communication needs of people living in St George and Dirranbandi’, Australian Federal Government: Department of Agriculture and Water Resources CARE Balonne.

See latest article here.

* 2018, 2019, 2020: Dr Adele Pavlidis (Griffith University), ‘Contesting Australian Sport Culture: Women and the Rise of Contact Sport’, ARC DECRA.

See latest article here.

Este fanzine busca construir un diálogo sentipensante a través de los testimonios de varias líderes sociales entrevistadas en el 2016, meses antes de que se firmara el Acuerdo de Paz con las FARC-EP.

PhD Thesis entitled: ‘Towards De(s)colonial Research in the Global Rural: A Feminist Feeling-Thinking Study with Rural Women in Colombia’.

(30 May 2018, Griffith University)

Thesis entitled: ‘The Triple Shift: A Study of Women’s Daily Life in Rural Colombia’.

(January 2014, Griffith University)