Speakers Continued:
Haroldo Dilla Alfonso (Havana, 1952) is a historian and sociologist, Doctor in Science from the Federal Polytechnic Institute of Lausanne, Switzerland. At present, he is a tenured professor and director of the Institute of International Studies (INTE) of the Arturo Prat University, Chile. He has been a researcher / visiting professor at Rutgers, Harvard, Puerto Rico, Hannover, and FLACSO-Mexico universities. Between 2015 and 2018 he directed the research on the Tacna-Arica cross-border region on the Chilean / Peruvian border (Fondecyt 1150812) and currently directs the Fondecyt 1190133 on urban port intermediation in Arica. His most recent books are La frontera dominico-haitiana (The Dominican-Haitian border) (Editorial Manatí, Santo Domingo, 2010), La migración haitiana en el Caribe (Haitian migration in the Caribbean) (Centro Bonó, Santo Domingo, 2013), Ciudades en el Caribe: un estudio comparado de La Habana, San Juan y Santo Domingo (Cities in the Caribbean: a comparative study of Havana, San Juan and Santo Domingo) (FLACSO, Mexico, 2014), La vuelta de todo eso: economía y sociedad en el complejo urbano transfronterizo Tacna/Arica (The return of all that: economy and society in the Tacna / Arica cross-border urban complex) (RIL, Santiago de Chile, 2019) and Donde el pedernal choca con el acero: Hacia una teoría de las fronteras latinoamericanas (Where flint collides with steel: Towards a theory of Latin American borders) (RIL, Santiago de Chile).
Kristen A. Kolenz earned her MA and PhD in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at The Ohio State University and her BA in philosophy at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. Her research focuses on resistance to state violence, Central American social movements, migration, and the transformative potential of everyday practices through the lens of decolonial and transnational feminisms. She is currently working on her book manuscript, an analysis of the transnational movements and community-building practices of Central Americans subjected to forced migration, dangerous crossing conditions, and confinement. In the study, Dr. Kolenz takes an interdisciplinary methodological approach that combines ethnographic methods, her own activist practice, and dance studies. The project bridges the fields of Latin American and Latinx Studies, bringing together research conducted in Guatemala, the Sonoran Desert, and immigrant justice movements in the US. The project’s goal is to document the transformative possibilities that emerge from Central Americans’ everyday practices of coping with loss, distance, and violence and to theorize transnational belonging in resistance to white supremacy.
Lucila Nejamkis, PhD in Social Sciences at Universidad de Buenos Aires. Her PhD thesis analysed inmigration policies in Argentina and Mercosur. She also holds a M.A. in Political Action and Citizen Participation (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos y Colegio de Abogados de Madrid, Madrid-Spain). BA in Sociology (U.B.A). Ex-PhD fellow of Conicet, and Ex-MA fellow of Community of Madrid. Current Researcher of the Technological and Scientific Research National Council (CONICET). Associate Researcher at IDAES (National University of San Martin, UNSAM) where she co-directs a migration studies center. She is also an Associate Professor at Arturo Jauretche National University. She has published numerous academic papers and chapters in books and has participated in several migration research projects dealing with a variety of subjects such as public policies, state, nationality, citizenship, and human rights in Argentina and MERCOSUR. Since 2019, co-director of the action-research “Socio-environmental strategies of women migrant workers in the Reconquista River Basin”, Buenos Aires Argentina) financed by the International Development Research Council (IDRC), Canada.
