| Indira Chowdhury Indira Chowdhury founded the Centre for Public History at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design, and Technology, Bengaluru in 2011. Her book, The Frail Hero and Virile History (Delhi, OUP, 1998) won the Tagore prize in 2001. She set up a number of institutional archives including the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. Her book,Growing the Tree of Science: Homi Bhabha and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (OUP: 2016) was supported by a New India Foundation Fellowship. She was President of the Oral History Association of India (2013-2016) and President of the International Oral History Association (2014-2016). She blogs about oral history and memory at http://theoralhistorian.com. |  |
Andreas Huyssen Andreas Huyssen is the Villard Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. His books include Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (1995), Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (2003), the edited volume Other Cities, Other Worlds: Urban Imaginaries in a Globalizing World (Duke UP, 2008), William Kentridge and Nalini Malani: The Shadowplay as Medium of Memory (2013), Miniature Metropolis: Literature in an Age of Photography and Film (2015), and Memory Art in the Contemporary World: Confronting Violence in the Global South (2022).
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'Voces de la Democracia / Voices of Democracy' – Plenary Roundtable, Tuesday 4 July
| The session will also be attended and introduced by His Excellency Javier Figueroa, Ambassador of the Argentine Republic to the United Kingdom. |
| Félix Bruzzone Félix Bruzzone (Buenos Aires, 1976) is a writer and coordinator of writing and reading workshops. In 2008, he published the collection of short stories, 76, and the novel, Los topos. In 2010, he published the novel Barrefondo, in 2014 the novel Las chanchas, and in 2017 the book of chronicles Piletas. His books have been translated into French and German. In 2019, he won the Anna Seghers prize, which recognises a Latin American author year. In 2013, he premiered the performative conference, Campo de Mayo, directed by Lola Arias. This was turned into a novel in 2018 and, in 2022, into the film Camuflaje, which won the Jury's Special Prize at the BAFICI festival the same year. Félix wrote the theatrical work El sueño de las piedras, which was directed by Emilio García Wehbi and premiered at the Centro Cultural Kirchner in 2021. |  |
| Liliana Furió Liliana Furió was born in Mendoza, Argentina in 1963. She is co-founder of the collective Historias disobedientes and Asamblea Desobediente, both organisations from by descendants of military and police perpetrators of the Military genocide in Argentina, who repudiate them. She is also a documentary filmmaker, addressing issues of social commitment and human rights. Her latest feature is Ilse Fuskova that focuses on the life of the lesbian feminist fighter of the 1980s. She is also a queer tango dancer and organizer of a milonga [tango ball] promoting inclusion. She is committed to the search for appropriated grandchildren by the last civic-military dictatorship in Argentina, supporting the struggle of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. |  |
| Luisa Futoransky Luisa Futoransky (Buenos Aires, 1939) is the author of some 20 collections of poems, 5 novels, as well as a number of non-fiction works, much of which has been translated. Recent books include Los años argentinos (2019), El poema, dos lugares (2018), Marchar de día (2017), Pintura rupestre (2014) and 23.53 Noveleta (2013). Her poetry has received awards in France, Spain and Argentina. Most notably, Luisa was honoured by the French government as a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 1991, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and in 1993 and in 2010, fellowships from the Centre National des Lettres in Paris. Futoransky's work is often cited in studies of contemporary Argentine women's writing as well as those dealing with issues of exile, transnational identity, language, contemporary Latin American poetry or Argentine writers in Paris. Fluent in Spanish, French, English, Hebrew and Italian, Luisa's work brings together an incredibly rich array of cultural references inspired by her experiences living in Latin America, Europe and East Asia, which she blends together with distinctive echoes of home (Argentina). |  |
| Bernard McGuirk Bernard McGuirk, MA (Glasgow), BPhil, DPhil (Oxon), Emeritus Professor of Romance Literatures and Literary Theory, formerly Director of the Postgraduate School of Critical Theory and Cultural Studies at Nottingham University, has directed to completion some forty doctoral theses and continues to supervise candidates at postgraduate level. He has devoted recent research to representations in literature and film of the Malvinas-Falklands conflict and to its aftermath in shaping UK-Argentine relations, including the plight of veterans, projects that form part of a broader interest in the literatures of war and post-conflict cultures. He is completing a sequel to his twenty-fifth anniversary monograph Falklands/Malvinas: An Unfinished Business, titled It Breaks Two to Tangle: Political Cartoons of the Falklands-Malvinas War. His theoretical concerns have invoked the interface between post-structuralism and literary production and his writing highlights the confrontation between theory, politics, and literature throughout the Romance-speaking cultures, in an applied poststructuralist perspective. His latest monographs are Erasing Fernando Pessoa (2017), Latin American Literature and Post-structuralism (2018) and Is There a Latin American Text in This Class? (2020). |  |
| Alejandra Naftal Alejandra Naftal is an anthropologist and museologist. She is the former general curator and director of the ESMA Site Museum - Former Clandestine Centre of Detention, Torture, and Extermination. In the area of Memory and Human Rights, she was also Coordinator of the Oral Archive hosted by Open Memory [Memoria Abierta]. She carried out the historical research, creation and development of the exhibition in the ESMA Site Museum. She worked as a museologist in the National Directorate of Museums, in the National Secretariat of Culture and in the National Museum of Fine Arts. As a high school student in 1978, Alejandra Naftal was illegally detained and disappeared. She was released in 1979 and went into exile until 1983. She has testified in both national and international trials. She has participated in various audiovisual productions, including ESMA (a four-part documentary series) and the feature films Crónica de una Fuga [Chronicle of an Escape], and Garage Olimpo [Olimpo Garage], among others. Her testimony from the trial of the military junta was included in the film Argentina, 1985 (2022, Santiago Mitre). |  |
Cecilia Sosa Cecilia Sosa (Buenos Aires, 1974) is an Argentinean sociologist and cultural journalist. She obtained an MA in Critical and Creative Analysis (Distinction, Goldsmiths College, University of London) and a PhD in Drama (Queen Mary, University of London), awarded the AHGBI best thesis publication prize. She currently works as the postdoctoral researcher for the British Academy research project 'Documentality and Display: Archiving and curating the violent past in contemporary Argentina, Chile and Colombia'. She is also affiliated to Royal Holloway, University of London as a postdoctoral researcher for the project 'Staging Difficult Pasts' as well as working as a consultant for the AHRC project 'Screening Violence. A Transnational Study of Post-Conflict Imaginaries' (Newcastle University). Her first monograph is entitled Queering Acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina's Dictatorship (Tamesis Books, 2014) and she has published extensively at the crossroads of memory, performance and affect, including articles in journals Memory Studies, Theory, Culture and Society, Feminist Theory, Subjectivity and Cultural Studies. |  |
María Zubelzu (Buenos Aires, 1970) is a Lecturer in Spanish in the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle University. She is also Director of the Study Abroad programme. Her teaching focuses on an approach to language learning through real-life encounters with cultural and political actors. María is herself an active member of the collective 'Víctimas Red de Parteras' [Victims of the Network of Midwives]. This collective brings together those who were stolen from their birth mothers and trafficked for adoption by a group of midwives and doctors who illegally registered them under a false identity. The midwives are known to have operated in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, under dictatorship and into democracy. Inspired by the decades-long campaign by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo and with a dedicated programme at the National Commission for the Right to Identity [Comisión Nacional por el Derecho a la Identidad - CONADI], the collective is working alongside similar groups across the nation in a campaign for memory, justice and the legally guaranteed right to an identity of origin. |  |
| Monica Zwaig Monica Zwaig was born in 1981 in France to Argentine parents. She was raised in France and studied law, specialising at postgraduate level in human rights at both the University of Paris II and the University of Essex. U.K. She has lived in Argentina since 2008, where she became accredited as a lawyer in 2017. In Argentina, she has worked at the Centre for Legal and Social Studies, the Justice Ministry and the Treasury. She is also an actor, writer and playwright. Her most notable dramatic work is Cuarto Intermedio, Guía práctica de audiencias de lesa humanidad [Court in Recess: A Practical Guide for Human Rights Trials], which she co-authored and performs with Félix Bruzzone. In 2021, she published her first novel Una familia bajo la nieve [A Family Under the Snow], Ed. Blatt&Ríos, which was selected as one of ten finalists in the 2022 Sarah Gallardo literary prize. |  |
Speakers from the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (ICSC)
| Aynura Akbas Aynura Akbas joined the War Childhood Museum in 2019 and is responsible for archival and research projects for the Museum's growing collection dedicated to the experience of growing up during the war. As an archivist and oral historian, she worked on documenting lived experiences of children on the move, former child soldiers, and others affected by armed conflict. Prior to joining the WCM, she obtained her MRes degree in History at Royal Holloway, University of London. Aynura is currently working towards her PhD in Gender studies at the London School of Economics (LSE). Her research interests include queer and feminist theories, alternative archives, memory studies, and militarism. |  |
| Lebogang Marishane Lebogang Marishane is a South African social justice practitioner working to advance the development of African communities and increase civic engagement. She firmly believes in challenging dominant narratives and histories; amplifying marginalized voices and experiences. Her passion is in supporting and building efforts to remember and commemorate historical events and struggles, such as those related to colonization, apartheid, and human rights abuses. She further believes in the efforts to decolonize education, culture, and challenging Eurocentric and colonial perspectives and to center the experiences and perspectives of marginalized communities. She is the Strategic Support Manager at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg. |  |
| Linda Norris Linda Norris is Senior Specialist, Methodology and Practice at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (ICSC). She facilitates connections and builds the capacity of museums, historic sites and memory organizations in the work of using the past to create a more just future. Linda has spearheaded Coalition projects such as the re-interpretation of Maison des Esclaves, Africa's first World Heritage Site; community-based development of public art prototypes by Indigenous artists in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and training for organizations as wide-ranging as the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation in the U.S. and the War Childhood Museum in Bosnia and Herzegovina. |  |
| Claver Irakoze Claver Irakoze is the author of Transmitting Memories in Rwanda: From a Survivor Parent to the Next Generation (Brill & Imagine We, 2023). He also is the author of the children's book That Child Is Me (Imagine We, 2019), and producer of the song and music video "Umurage w'amateka" (The Legacy of History). Irakoze works for the Aegis Trust as manager for the research, documentation and policy engagement (RDPE) department. He led the development of the Genocide Archive of Rwanda and Peace and Values Education Digital Learning Platform, both digital platforms designed to support memory preservation efforts and learning/teaching of genocide history and post genocide recovery for current and future generations in Rwanda and beyond. |  |
| Katia Chornik Katia Chornik is Impact Development Manager at Kingston University and Research Associate at Cambridge University's Centre of Latin American Studies. Her research in memory studies focuses on music in centres for political detention centres in Chile during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship (1973–1990). She is the author of the monographs Alejo Carpentier and the Musical Text (Routledge, 2015) and Captive Songs: Music and Political Detention in Pinochet's Chile (OUP, forthcoming in 2024). She is the founder and editor of the bilingual digital project Cantos Cautivos, compiling over 160 testimonies of experiences of music written, played and heard under political detention in Chile. |  |