Research Associates

Kanishka Sikri (kanishkasikri.com) is a writer and theorist thinking about violability: the practice that marks certain lives, bodies, and lands to the possibility of violence. They are currently a PhD candidate at York University speculating on the ways violence becomes synonymous with and inhabits the flesh. Kanishka asks how we may speak about violence, lay it bare, grieve and mourn its many insidious faces without replicating the notion that certain lives are violable and capable of being violated.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Latin America and the Caribbean

Keywords: violability, violence

TAMARA TOLEDO is a Chilean-born Toronto-based PhD Art History and Visual Culture candidate at York University as well as a scholar, curator, and artist. Toledo is co-founder of the Allende Arts Festival and of Latin American Canadian Art Projects - LACAP. For over a decade, she has curated numerous exhibitions offering spaces and opportunities to artists of Latin American descent to showcase their work. She designed and has been curating the Latin American Speakers Series for which she has invited internationally renowned contemporary artists and curators to Toronto to articulate and discuss issues of identity and intercultural dynamics in contemporary art. Toledo has presented her work at various conferences in Montreal, New York, Vancouver, Chicago, and Toronto. Her writing has appeared in ARM Journal, C Magazine, Fuse, Canadian Art, and Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture Journal.  Her practice follows an interdisciplinary approach and touches on notions of memory, identity, diasporas, transnationalism, issues of power, representation, and international artistic-cultural interaction. Toledo is presently the Director/Curator of Sur Gallery, the only space dedicated to contemporary Latin American art in Canada.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Chile

Keywords: memory, identity, diasporas, transnationalism, issues of power, representation, and international artistic-cultural interaction

I am a second-year Ph.D. student in the department of anthropology. On a very broad level, I am interested in the way in which art murals and graffiti, are imbricated in a broader reconfiguration of the meaning of the past, present, and future. I situate the experience of Salvadorans within the longer history of conflict in El Salvador (Bourgois 2001; Ching 2016; Binford, 1997, 2002) and draw on literature in the anthropology of subjectivity.

In pursuing a Ph.D., I would like to address the key role of everyday politics in the contestation and articulation of space, memory, and futurities. The questions I am currently grappling with include: 1) how is historical memory contested through different modes of public visual art?; 2) how do grafiteros assert or challenge narratives of post-war recovery through the use of graffiti?; and 3) in what ways does the narrative of recovery lend itself to the transformation of the streets from a space of uncertainty and violence to one of hope and futurities?

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: El Salvador

Keywords: Materiality of space; architectural and geographical landscapes; affect; political violence; graffiti and art murals in El Salvador and Latin America; time; and memory.

Lorenzo Vargas is a communication for development specialist, a communication rights activist, and a researcher on citizens’ media. He is pursuing a PhD in Communication at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) / York University, where he is affiliated with the Global Communication Governance Lab (TMU) and the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (York). His research focuses on the relationship between communication rights and climate justice among rural communities in the Amazon regions of Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador. Outside his academic life, Lorenzo works with WACC, an international civil society organization focused on communication rights, where he directs a global initiative that support grassroots sustainable development efforts in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa. He holds degrees in international development and communication from York University and McGill University, and has also pursued studies on media and Internet policy at DiploFoundation, the University of Brasilia, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, and the University of Oxford. His publications include Citizen’s Media as a Tool for the Local Construction of Peace in Colombia (2013); Indigenous Community Media Aid Reconciliation in Canada (2015); Expanding Shrinking Communication Spaces (ed. with Philip Lee) (2020); and Communicating Climate Justice (ed. with Philip Lee)  (2022).

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador

Keywords: Communication rights, climate justice, activism, media

Caren Weisbart is a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Studies at York University and a research associate at the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean. Over the past fifteen  years, her work in Guatemala has focused on issues related to agrarian reform, genocide, political economy, security, and Canadian mining conflicts. She currently serves on the coordinating committee of the Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Network.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Canada and Guatemala

Keywords:  sovereignty, violence, political economy, law

Emily graduated with distinction from Toronto Metropolitan University with a BA (Hons) in Public Administration and Governance, a minor in Global Politics and Development, and a Certificate in Food Security. Since her early days in the community gardens of British Columbia, she has worked with non-profit organizations to strengthen food security and build resilient communities. After years of work in emergency food distribution and food skills education, Emily became interested in the state's role in food systems and has served on several food policy councils, including as Chair of the Simcoe County Food Council. Awards recognizing her dedication to academic and community work include the Alterna Prize for Women Social Change Leaders (2020) and the David Crombie Achievement Award (2023). Emily's current research on the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program examines how extractive neocolonial systems affect development in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada.

Keywords: Food security, food distribution and food skills education, food systems, food policy, seasonal agriculture

Riley Wolfe is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at York University. They completed their BA at St Francis Xavier University and their MA in history at York University with their Major Research Paper, “Transnational Relations at the 1991 International Lesbian and Gay Association Annual Conference in Acapulco, Mexico.” Their research focuses on Mexican activists work in transnational queer networks and connections between the Mexican queer movement and the global Left-Wing movement in the late 20^th century. They are also interested in how these transnational connections influenced understandings and representations of gender and sexuality in Mexico.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Mexico

Keywords: queer networks, queer movements, gender, sexuality