CRS/CERLAC Seminar: ‘Con un gran amor’: Photos, Stories, and Reflections from Postwar El Salvador

Adriana Alas completed her PhD in Social Anthropology at El Colegio de Michoacán in Mexico and a three-year postdoctoral appointment at Western University (Canada). Her community-based research explores community memory of the war, survivor testimonies, the documentation of victims’ names, the recovery of wartime knowledge of traditional plants, and historic photos of the war era. In 2025, she became the research coordinator for the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador project as well as a research associate for the project Commemorating the Experiences of Liberian Women Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence for Collective Healing at Western University.

Giada Ferrucci is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Media Studies at Western University’s Faculty of Information and Media Studies, with a strong interdisciplinary background in international relations and economic development. Her work lies at the intersection of environmental justice, social movements, and media studies. She explores how communities resist extractive projects, document historical and environmental memory, and mobilize knowledge through participatory and decolonial methodologies.
In 2017 and 2018, she worked in El Salvador as an intern for Asociación para el Desarrollo de El Salvador (CRIPDES) and first joined the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador project. As a postdoctoral scholar, she continues to develop three interconnected projects: The Environment as a Memory Medium in Postwar El Salvador, Epistemologies Inspired by the Salvadoran Diaspora in Canada, and A Pedagogy of Solidarity in North America. These initiatives collectively examine archival activism, environmental memory, diasporic identity, and solidarity practices through community-engaged and ethical research methodologies.

Amanda Grzyb is Professor of Information and Media Studies and the Rogers Chair of Studies in Journalism in New Information Technology at Western University. Her primary teaching and research interests include collaborative and survivor-led documentation of state violence; GPS, LiDAR, and massacre mapping; comparative genocide studies; media and social movements; and memory studies. She currently serves as the project director/PI for Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador (www.elsalvadormemory.org), a SSHRC, CFI, and ORF-funded community-based research partnership committed to documenting the history of the Salvadoran Civil War and preventing future violence. She is also a co-applicant on two other SSHRC-funded research partnership projects, Commemorating the Experiences of Liberian Women Survivors of Conflict Related Sexual Violence for Collective Healing (led by Dr. Erica Lawson), and Participatory Agroecological Research for Transforming Knowledge and Equity in African Communities (led by Dr. Isaac Luginaah). In 2025, she joined the international advisory board for the Justice Visions initiative at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University. Grzyb holds a Ph.D. in English from Duke University.

Morgan Poteet is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada. Morgan’s research and teaching interests are in the areas of migration, critical border studies, youth, criminalization, racialization, identity, belonging, Trauma and resilience. His current research uses qualitative and arts-based approaches such as Photovoice to explore social memory and current realities among Salvadoran youth in Canada and El Salvador.

Jocelyn Torres is a PhD candidate in anthropology at York University. Her research interests include (in)security, processes of (in)securitization, urban livelihoods, gentrification, tourism, urban regeneration art projects, and the revitalization of urban spaces. Her doctoral research in El Salvador has explored the impacts of el regimen de excepción on discourses of (in)security and processes of (in)securitization in El Salvador; gentrification of historical centres and urban spaces in San Salvador; the revitalization of urban spaces in San Salvador through community art projects; and the implications of tourism development for security in El Salvador.