About
Pilar Riaño-Alcalá is a professor at the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia and co-lead of the Transformative Memory International Network. Pilar is an anthropologist and interdisciplinary scholar and an ethnographer/labourer of memory work. Her research focuses on three broad themes: a) witnessing and the lived experiences of violence in the afterlives of political violence, war and genocide, b) landscapes and practices of memory and social repairing, and c) ecologies of absence and presence in memory work. She is particularly interested in the politics of knowledge and epistemic justice, using relational methodologies that integrate different forms of emplaced and creative knowing, oral history, sound memory, and social practice art. She is a Senior Fellow at The Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies, CALAS (University of Guadalajara, Mexico) and a Faculty Associate in the Department of Anthropology, UBC.
Pilar has collaborated and accompanied for the last fourteen years the memory and research work of Black and Indigenous communities in the Middle Atrato and Upper Guajira of Colombia, a praxis of knowing that explores emplaced and creative research methodologies that draw on other knowledges, human and non human world making practices, and centrally locate action and change in knowledge production. She is currently working on three large research projects, Transformative Memory: An International Network (a SSHRC Partnership Grant with Erin Baines, UBC); Exhumations and Burial in Colombia and A Place of Memory (with the Committee of Victims of the Middle Atrato River) and Sacred Responsibilities to Water. Indigenous Knowledge Exchanges, Canada-Colombia (with Aimée Craft, University of Ottawa).
For over twenty years, Pilar has collaborated with public performance artist Suzanne Lacy on the public art project “The Skin of Memory” and related installations (Yerbabuena Center for the Arts and MOMA, 2019; the 8th Floor Gallery of the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, New York, 2018; AD&A Museum at UC Santa Barbara, 2017; and Museo de Antioquia, Art Biennale, 2011).
As a public intellectual, Pilar has conducted extensive collaborative research and expert work in non-academic settings with various community-based organizations and initiatives of memory work (Corporación Región, Medellin, Justice and Reconciliation Project, Uganda, the Committee for the Rights of the Victims, Choco, The Collective of Communications Montes de Maria) and in the context of peace building and historical memory work in Colombia. She was appointed as a researcher of the Historical Memory Group (2008-2013), a research group comprising researchers and experts that was tasked under the Colombian Law of Peace and Justice with producing a report on the origins and causes of the armed conflict in Colombia. She was an advisor to the Museum of Historical Memory of Colombia (2015-2019) for the development of its conceptual guidelines and script.
Teaching
Publications
Selected Bibliography
Books
2021, Comité por los derechos de las víctimas [Committee for Victims’ Rights] in collaboration with Riaño-Alcalá, Pilar; Quiceno, Natalia and Camila, Orjuela. 2021. The Dead of Bojaya are our Dead. Exhumations, Identification and Accompaniment in Bojayá, Chocó [In Spanish]. Comité por los derechos de las víctimas: Medellín. (60% research, concept and writing).
2018, Riaño, P and M. Bello. Museo Nacional de la Memoria: Un lugar para el encuentro [The National Museum of Memory: A place of encounter]. Bogotá: Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica.
2013, Bello, M; Suarez, A; Gonzalez, F. Riaño, P; Uprinmy, R, Sánchez, L. Basta Ya. Colombia: Memorias de Guerra y Dignidad [Enough already. War Memories and Dignity]. Final Report of the Historical Memory Commission. Bogota: Centro Nacional de Memoria Historica. 2013 (25%)
2011, Villa M. I; Riaño-Alcalá, P; Sánchez, A. (Rapporteurs), Jaramillo, Ana; Bello, Martha N. and Gonzalez, S. (Co-rapporteurs). The Invisble Traces of the War. Forced Displacement in Comuna 13 of Medellin. A Report by the Historical Memory Group of the National Commission of Reparation and Reconciliation (Colombia). Bogotá: Taurus, 2011. 332 pages. In Spanish. (50%)
Journals
2021 Riaño-Alcalá, Pilar. Stories that claim: Justice narratives and testimonial practices among the Wayuu. Anthropological Quarterly. Vol 93 (4): 589-623.
2020 Riaño-Alcalá, P. and R. Chaparro. Singing the River’s Suffering: Memory, Poetics and Political Action of the Cantadoras of the Middle Atrato in Choco / Cantando el sufrimiento del río. Memoria, poética y acción política de las cantadoras del Medio Atrato. Revista Colombiana de Antropología, 56 (2): 79-110
2020 Riaño-Alcalá, P and N. Quiceno. Presences, Sensibilities and Everyday Politics of Dwelling in the Atrato /Presencias, sensibilidades y políticas cotidianas del habitar en el Atrato. Revista Colombiana de Antropología, 56(2): 7-17
2020 Riaño, P. Orjuela, C. Quiceno, N and J. Valencia. Dignificar la vida y la muerte: Entierro colectivo en medio de la persistencia de la guerra en Bojayá, Colombia. Dossier “Verdad, Justicia y Memoria en America Latina.” LASA Forum 51:1: 14-19
2017 LeGrand, C. van Isschot, L. and P. Riaño-Alcalá. 2017. Land, Memory and Justice: Challenges for Peace. Introduction to the Special Issue on Land, Memory and Justice. Canadian Journal of Latin America and Caribbean Studies, 42(3): 259-276.
2016 Riaño Alcalá, P. and M. V. Uribe. Constructing Memory amidst War: The Historical Memory Group of Colombia. International Journal of Transitional Justice 10(1): 6-24.
2015 Riaño-Alcala, P. Emplaced Witnessing: Sites of Insight, Imagination and Commemoration among the Wayuu. Memory Studies, 8(3), 282-297.
2014 Riaño-Alcalá, P and L. Goldring. Unpacking Refugee Community Transnational Organizing: the Challenges and Diverse Experiences of Colombians in Canada. Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol 33 (2): 84-111.
2012 Riaño-Alcala, P. and E. Baines. Introduction. Special Issue “Transitional Justice and the Everyday.” International Journal of Transitional Justice 6(3): 385-393, November 2012.
2012 Riaño-Alcalá, P. and E. Baines. Cuando el archivo está en el testigo. Análisis Político (Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Relaciones Internacionales, Universidad Nacional), Revista N, 74: 49-70, April
2011 Riaño-Alcalá, P. and E. Baines. The Archive in the Witness: Documentation in Settings of Chronic Insecurity. The International Journal of Transitional Justice, 5(3): 412-433. (Impact factor: 1.79; ranked 8/82 in International Relations and 22/134 in Law)
Book Chapters
2024 Riaño-Alcalá, Pilar. Poetics and Politics of Sound Memory and Social Repair in the Afterlives of Mass Violence: The Cantadoras of the Atrato River of Colombia. In, Memorializing Violence: Transnational Feminist Reflections. Edited by Alison Crosby. Rutgers University Press. In Print.
2023 Riaño-Alcalá, Pilar. “We gave them names:” Exhumations, Peace Agreement and Social Reparation in Bojayá, Chocó. In Histories of Perplexity. Colombia, 1970-2010s. Edited by Lina Britto and Ricardo López-Pedreros, Routledge Studies in the History of the Americas, Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, pp. 419-441.
2023 Riaño, Pilar. La memoria como experiencia transformadora de los sentidos políticos [Memory as transformative experience of political sense making]. In, Mujeres de la comunicación 2. América Latina y el Caribe. Edited by Clemencia Rodríguez, Amparo Marroquín and Omar Rincón. Fiedrich Ebert Stiftung FES Comunicación. Pp. 253-268.
2022 Riaño-Alcalá, Pilar. I de Iglesia. In: Daniel Ruiz and Diana Ojeda, eds., Belicopedia. Bogota: Universidad de los Andes. pp. 94-104
Multimedia
Exhuming, Identifying and Acommpanying in Bojayá
Los muertos de Bojayá son nuestros muertos. Exhumar, identificar y acompañar en Bojayá
Stories with GPS. A Mythic and Historical Geography of La Guajira http://www.geografiasmiticasguajira.com/eng/index.html
Remembering and Narrating Conflict
https://blogs.ubc.ca/reconstructinghistoricalmemory/
Awards
2021, Senior Fellow. Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS), Univeristy of Guadalajara, Mexico and Bielefeld University, Germany. January – December, 2021.
2019, Academic Writing fellow at the Bellagio Center, Italy, March 20th, 2019 to April 17th, 2019. Rockefeller Foundation
2009-2015, Faculty Fellow in Residence; Liu Institute for Global Issues, UBC.
Graduate Supervision
Note: I am not currently taking any new graduate students for supervision.
PhD
Alejandra Gaviria, PhD student, SJI. Memory as a Creative Force: The role of artistic grassroots practices for symbolic reparation.
Michael Paramo, PhD candidate, SJI. Mixed-Media Autoethnographic Approaches in Education for Transformative Learning and Social Justice.
Nathalie Lozano, PhD. Student. SJI. Decolonial Solidarity, Transnational Relationships and Mobilization of Indigenous Women in Canada, Colombia, and Mexico
Romina Tantalean, PhD candidate, SJI. Indigenizing Environmental Justice: Towards the Rights of Mother Nature Guided by Indigenous Women’s Leadership of the Peruvian Central East Amazon
Tamara Ukwu, PhD candidate,SJI. The evacuation of unaccompanied children in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war (1992-1995).
Ayu Ratih, PhD candidate, Interdisciplinary Studies. Topic: Mothers of the Nation: Women Survivors of 1965-66 Genocide in Indonesia. Co-supervisor.
Graduated
Francisco Gómez, PhD Interdisciplinary Studies. Topic: Territorial Affirmation: Sustainable Production and Conservation Practices in the Páramo Communities of Sumapaz, Colombia.
Ketty Anyeko, PhD Interdisciplinary Studies. Topic: Senses of Justice: Women’s decision-making after wartime sexual violence in Northern Uganda.
Juliane Okot Bitek, PhD Interdisciplinary Studies, Co-supervisor: Erin Baines. Topic: Songs of Soldiers: Decolonizing Political Memory Through Poetry and Song.
Ricardo Chaparro, PhD Social Work. Topic: An approach to the sense of responsibility in the confessions of former low-ranking members of the paramilitary in Colombia.
Carmen Miranda, PhD Hispanic Studies. Topic: Memories of Sounds: Radio as Sound Representation Among the Latin American Exiled Diaspora in the Canadian West Coast
Laura Lee, PhD Interdisciplinary Studies. Topic: Youth Sexual Health in Settings of Chronic Crisis. The case of youth-headed households in Kenya´s Rift Vallery Province.
Haouri Wu, PhD Interdisciplinary Studies. Topic: From New town to New Home, Post-disaster Rural Reconstruction in Sichuan, China: Memory, Participation and Government Intervention.
MA
Brenda Forero, MA SJI, 2024, Bearing Witness to Sexual Violence Testimonies: Insights from the “Encounter for the Truth: My Body Tells the Truth.”
Marianne El-Mitaki, 2024, MA SJI, Borders, Identity and Belonging: Navigating Levantine Refugee and Forced Migrant Solidarity With Indigenous Communities on Coast Salish Lands.
Ly Ren, MA SJI, In Progress
Valeria Alcaraz, MA SJI, 2022, Letters between Mothers and Daughters: a Radical Act of Love and Resistance from a Racial-Ethnic Feminist Perspective.
Natalia Gallo, MA Interdisciplinary Studies, UBC O, 2020, Violence Against Social Leaders and Human Rights Defenders in the Context of the 2016 Peace Accords.
Paola Adarve, MA SJI, 2022, Facing Medusa: (Intimate) Art and Resistance in the Colombian Armed Conflict.
Steve Stewart, MA Interdisciplinary Studies, 2019, More than the Silence of Rifles. Guatemalan Rebel Combatants’ Perspectives on the Eve of Peace.
Ferma Ravn, MA Social Work, 2015, Female Tenants’ Perspectives of Safety in Supportive Housing on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and Downtown Core.
Additional Description
Short Biography
Pilar Riaño-Alcalá is a professor at the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia and co-lead of the Transformative Memory International Network. Pilar is an anthropologist and interdisciplinary scholar. Her research focuses on three broad themes: a) witnessing and the lived experiences of violence in the afterlives of political violence, war and genocide, b) landscapes and practices of memory and social repairing, and c) ecologies of absence and presence in memory work. She is particularly interested in the politics of knowledge and epistemic justice, using relational methodologies that integrate different forms of emplaced and creative knowing, oral history, sound memory, and social practice art. She is a Senior Fellow at The Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies, CALAS (University of Guadalajara, Mexico) and a Faculty Associate in the Department of Anthropology, UBC.
Pilar has collaborated for over two decades with public performance artist Suzanne Lacy on The Skin of Memory project, which has been featured in exhibitions worldwide. As a public intellectual, she has worked closely with Afrocolombian and Indigenous organizations in the Middle Atrato river and the Upper Guajira of Colombia and with grassroots initiatives of memory in various regions of Colombia. She was a researcher for the Historical Memory Group of Colombia from 2008 to 2013 and also advised the Museum of Historical Memory of Colombia on its conceptual development (2015-2018).
Pilar’s published works examine themes on ethnographies of violence, remembering and forgetting in the aftermaths of violence, forced migration and internal displacement, gender, race and war, and social practice art. She publishes both in Spanish and English and uses multimedia modalities to communicate research findings.