Dr. Pilar Riaño Alcalá

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. She is an anthropologist and interdisciplinary scholar whose research centers on the themes of witnessing lived experiences of violence, the afterlives of political violence and war, memory practices, and social repair. Her work emphasizes the importance of epistemic justice and incorporates relational methodologies that blend various forms of creative expression such as oral history, sound memory, and social practice art. Pilar has collaborated with Afrocolombian and Indigenous communities in Colombia over two decades on projects focused on memory and historical justice. As a Senior Fellow at the Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies, she has also partnered with public performance artist Suzanne Lacy on the 'Skin Memory' project. Additionally, she served on the Historical Memory Group of Colombia from 2008 to 2013 and provided advisory roles for the Museum of Historical Memory in Colombia. Her publications explore themes of violence, memory, forced migration, and the intersections of race and gender within the context of social practice art, disseminated in both Spanish and English. Her engagements span across community-based initiatives reflecting deep-rooted issues in Colombia's history, affecting marginalized populations.

Research Interests

Experience

Awards