ART Team and Partners

Ana is a Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art in the History of Art Department at the University of York. Her research explores histories of exhibition-making and art institutions, as well as contemporary art from the Global South through the lens of extractivism, social justice, and decolonial thought. Prior to joining the University of York, she was editor of Afterall Journal and research fellow at Afterall Research Centre at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. In 2017 she was Visiting Scholar in the Art History Department at KU Leuven, Belgium. Ana has taught undergraduate and postgraduate modules at the University of Essex and was a visiting lecturer on the BA and MA in Culture, Criticism and Curation and on the MRes in Exhibition Studies at Central Saint Martins (UAL). Ana has worked in various areas of the cultural sector, including arts education, curating, and art fairs.

Alejandro is a writer, photographer, sound producer, and ethnographer of memory and violence in Latin America and Africa. Between 2020-2022, Alejandro was Commissioner of Colombia’s Truth Commission and editor-in-chief of its Final Report’s innovative testimonial volume: When Birds Didn’t Sing: Histories of Colombia’s Armed Conflict (2022). Alejandro’s work has dealt, over almost three decades, with the effects/affects that violence has had on the existential landscape of human experience. His extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Colombia, South Africa, and Mexico with survivors of torture, displacement, disappearance, as well as with former combatants and guerrillas led him to create the Critical Studies Program on Political Transitions and explore other “languages” (sonic, visual, or corporeal) to speak about pain and survival. He has also been visiting professor/scholar at several academic institutions in England, Germany, Mexico, France, South Africa, Brazil, and the U.S. He is currently preparing a book (the last one in a trilogy on violence and subjectivity) under the title After the Traces of the Body: Ethnophonies, (in)materialities, and the sensible life of the Disappeared. He is also finishing his reflexive text The Nomadic Word: Fragments and Stories of Violence and the Pedagogies of the Irreparable (2023). Alejandro is professor of anthropology at the Universidad de los Andes, Colombia.

Ron is a senior lecturer at the Sociology and Anthropology Department, Ben Gurion University. His research is in the fields of human rights, transitional justice, and the sociology of punishment. He is the author of Penality in the Underground: The IRA’s Pursuit of Informers (Oxford University Press, 2022). He published on diverse issues such as human rights in the age of populism, treason and the death penalty, dilemmas of human rights activism, the commemoration of rescuers, transitional justice as social control, the adoption of human rights discourse by illiberal actors, symbolic reparations by armed groups, and the politics of analogies in divided societies, in leading journals including the British Journal of Sociology, British Journal of Criminology, Punishment & Society, Law & Social Inquiry, Political Studies, and Human Rights Quarterly. Ron is an editorial board member of the Journal of Human Rights Practice, where he was previously co-editor, and edited a special state of the art issue.

Emilie is an associate at the University of York's Centre for Applied Human Rights. She is based at the artist-led studios, Pica Studios, in the centre of York. Emilie's filmmaking focus is on arts, research and rights-based films. She is a senior associate at the participatory video organisation, Insightshare and worked as a filmmaker and coordinator of the AHRC Art, Archive and Activism project for the Centre for Applied Human Rights, and as a researcher and facilitator in the creative activism and development alternatives projects. She is currently also working as a filmmaker for the Leave the Light On production at Mind the Gap Theatre about climate change.

Paul is the Co-Director of the Centre for Applied human Rights (CAHR) at the University of York and the Principal Investigator on ART. This project represents the fulfilment of a long-held dream. Since 2013, when CAHR hosted a Leverhulme Artist in Residence, Paul and colleagues have been using the arts in their research and practice. ART draws together and extends a number of flagship projects at CAHR from the past decade. These include Arctivism, which feeds into Covid Legacies; Development Alternatives which informs Political Imaginaries of Development; and York becoming the UK’s first human rights city in 2017, which shapes Localising Human Rights in York. The research in Canada and Colombia will no doubt add greatly to Paul’s understanding of his main research interest, transitional justice. A final nest of concerns – how to enhance human rights defender security, push back against shrinking civic and political space, and the practice challenges associated with these developments - also underpin the project. ART provides an exciting opportunity to distil and expand insights from across these issues and activities. The researchers and partners represent a mix of old and new friends and collaborators, and an exciting blend of disciplinary and sectoral backgrounds. We collectively hope that ART can make a distinctive contribution to research, the arts and activism, by suggesting a range of new languages and idioms for human rights in the future.

Oliver is the project administrator, having joined the Centre for Applied Human Rights in 2021. Since graduating from university with a history degree in 2013, he has worked in museums and art galleries across Yorkshire in a variety of roles. Prior to starting his position at the University of York he briefly worked in the charity sector, with a particular focus on mental health and wellbeing.

Tallulah is a Research Associate based in the Department of Politics at the University of York where she is also a PhD candidate. Her PhD deals with feminist artistic interventions in Mexico. She is co-author of The Gendered Face of Covid-19 in the Global South. Her research interests include feminism and gender in Latin America, critical art, social movements and human rights, and she is particularly interested in using ethnography and creative and participatory methodologies in her research. Tallulah has lived and worked between the UK and Latin America since 2015, participating in grassroots activism and art projects including co-founding the feminist art collective Las Iluministas. Tallulah is also a visual artist specialising in muralism.

Helen is an international curator with the role of Associate Director, Programme, at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. She was Vice Chair of the Civic art gallery and theatre in Barnsley; the Chair of UP Projects, London (2019-22); curatorial advisor to ArtRole in Iraqi Kurdistan and NIROX in South Africa. She is also a Cultural Fellow of York St John University and was an advisor to the Arts Council Collection Acquisition Committee (2016–17). Helen is regularly invited to undertake international lectures and tours including Sculpture Dublin (2020); Park 3020, Ukraine (2019); the Contemporary Austin, USA (2017) and as the guest of Creative India (2013). Helen has collaborated with Selfridges since 2018 to curate the Duke Street entrance to their flagship London store. Dr Pheby's research and practice is rooted in the belief that the creative intuition is central to humanity, problem solving and innovation. She has a motivation to understand the potential of art and its institutions in the world. Her PhD thesis considered controversial public sculpture as a means to better understand art’s place in a healthy society, which is evolved through debate and understanding, and she is a recognised authority on art beyond the institution. To this end, she has worked with international partners to co-curate several offsite projects including the Kyiv Sculpture Project (2012) and 'A Place in Time' (2016) at the NIROX sculpture foundation in the UNESCO Cradle of Humankind, South Africa.

Brian is a human rights practitioner and educator. He is the co-founder of the Journal of Human Rights Practice (Oxford University Press), where he contributes regularly on human rights and the arts. He has worked as an independent human rights consultant since 2007. From 2003 until 2006, he was Chair of the Oxford Brookes University MA program in Humanitarian and Development Practice (UK) – where he was also Senior Lecturer in Human Rights Practice. He worked for eleven years as a campaigner and educator for Amnesty International in London (UK), where he was the Campaign Coordinator for the organization’s Europe Regional Program from 1995 - 2001. From 1993 until 1995, Brian was the Coordinator of Amnesty’s global Campaign against Disappearances and Political Killings. During 2001-2002, he was a Joseph Rowntree Quaker Fellow (Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, UK) – teaching and writing on Quaker international work in the fields of peacebuilding and conflict transformation. Brian was closely involved in the development of the Quaker Peace and Social Witness program in the post-Yugoslav region (1996-2007).