The Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo Digital Archive: Historical Memory and Guatemala’s Disappeared

Wednesday, February 13, 12–1:30 pm, Benson Conference Room, SRH 1.208

No prior knowledge necessary. Students, faculty, and staff from any discipline are encouraged to attend. For questions, please contact Albert A. Palacios at aapalacios@austin.utexas.edu.

LLILAS Benson “Digital Scholarship in the Americas” Speaker Series
Co-Sponsored by the Mellon Foundation

This talk describes the Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo (GAM) Digital Archive – a collaborative, post-custodial project that is digitizing, preserving, and providing access to documentation of human rights violations during Guatemala’s armed internal conflict (1960-1996). The digital archive is a partnership between the GAM, one of Guatemala’s oldest and most respected human rights organizations, and the Digital Scholarship (DS) team at Haverford College. Dr. Alex Galarza will discuss how the project team – composed of students, scholars, and human rights activists – has centered pedagogy and sustainability in the work of creating a digital archive that aims to shift historical memory of the armed conflict by sharing case files about forced disappearances and other atrocities. These efforts raise important issues of ethics in working with and sharing traumatic materials as well as privacy for victims of human rights abuses.

Dr. Galarza is the Postdoctoral Fellow in Data Curation for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Haverford College and leads the Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo (GAM) Digital Archive. He completed his Ph.D. in Latin American History at Michigan State University where his work focused on soccer clubs and urban politics in Buenos Aires. He is the co-founder of footballscholars.org, an online platform for soccer scholarship and the editor of GradHacker, an InsideHigherEd.com blog sharing advice on graduate studies.

Light refreshments will be served. Registration opens Tuesday, January 22 and closes Tuesday, February 12 at 5 PM through Eventbrite.

 

LLILAS Benson Digital Scholarship