Mariana Mora (Associate Professor - Researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology, Mexico City) will present “When witnessing isn’t enough: reflections on justice and the transformative potential of research.”
This presentation is part of the Interseminars culminating event: Collisions Across Color Lines: Reconsidering Racism, Movements,
and Epistemes in the Americas. Free and open to the public.
This talk brings together a series of critical reflections on how socially committed research contributes to transformative expressions of justice under conditions of extreme violence and state impunity. Dr. Mora will draw from recent research projects in the state of Guerrero, Mexico—including one that involves accompanying the family members of the 43 teacher college students from Ayotzinapa, victims of forced disappearance in 2014 and another that is multi-racial collaborative research project on the racialized effects of gendered violences in Indigenous and Afro-Mexican regions. Despite the tireless efforts of socially committed academics and their meticulous elaboration of data that renders evident structural and institutional responsibilities, there exists a generalized sentiment that producing knowledge to name and denounce atrocities falls short in its ability to contribute to social transformation. At the same time, prioritizing such acts of witnessing runs the risk of failing to attend to the affective and care-taking commitments that are integral to socially committed research. The talk draws from feminist research methods to reflect on the methodological and ethical political considerations that surface from these tensions. It invites the audience to reflect of the embodied possibilities of justice throughout the research process itself and how such forms of knowledge production can thread together restorative social relations at the margins of the state.
About the Speaker
Mariana Mora is an Associate Professor - Researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico City. Her research focuses on struggles against violence and the continued processes of colonization as part of state formation in Latin America and her scholarship is situated within critical race theories, gender studies, decoloniality and the political. She is author of the award-winning book, Kuxlejal Politics: Indigenous Autonomy, Race and Decolonial Research in Zapatista Communities (2018). Her recent scholarship centers on struggles for justice against racialized forms of gendered violence and territorial dispossession in the state of Guerrero. Dr. Mora was the 2023 recipient of the Elise and Walter A. Hass International Award from the University of California Berkeley and the 2022 recipient of the Barcardi Family Eminent Scholar in Latin America from the University of Florida. She is part of the Collective to Eliminate Racism in Mexico (Copera) and the Decolonial Feminist Network. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from Stanford University.
The Interseminars Initiative is supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Humanities Research Institute, the Graduate College, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the College of Fine and Applied Arts, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation.