Paula Mónaco Felipe, Ayotzinapa Now?
A freelance journalist. “I go from text to images, back and forth again. I write, produce, research. I publish in media such as The New York Times, Gatopardo, La Jornada; and I have collaborated with Al Jazeera Witness, RedFish, Vice, among others. I was a correspondent for teleSUR and El Telégrafo. I am founder and editor of Bocado.lat. I have been a Pulitzer Center and Rainforest Fund fellow, teaming up with Soledad Barruti and Miguel Tovar, a fellow of UNESCO’s Investigative Journalism Pilot Programme with Wendy Selene Pérez and Miguel Tovar. I wrote the book Ayotzinapa, horas eternas, and co-authored four other books. With John Gibler and Daniela Rea, I did the research for the documentary VIVOS, directed by Ai Wei Wei (2020). I worked on The Days of Ayotzinapa (Netflix, 2019) and others. I researched and hosted the US-Mexico chapter of the series After the War (Muzungu-teleSUR, 2019). I sometimes work as an external consultant for non-governmental organisations. I have written three reports on violence against the press, right to truth, children and disappearance. In 2019 and 2022 we were awarded Mexico’s National Journalism Prize in the chronicle and reportage categories, respectively, teaming up with Wendy Selene Pérez and Miguel Tovar. In 2022, one of our articles won second place in the Breach-Valdez Journalism Prize.”
Lucía Melgar, Femicide in Mexico
Lucía Melgar is a cultural critic, feminist activist, and independent researcher who studies literature, politics, and violence in Mexico and Latin America. She has taught at Princeton University, UNAM, ITAM, and other institutions. Her research has focused on Elena Garro’s works and life, representations of violence in Hispanic American narrative and theater, and gender issues. She writes a weekly column on gender and human rights in Mexico’s El Economista and CIMAC Noticias. Her most recent publication in English is “Reclaiming the Streets: Feminicidio and the Space of Women’s Human Rights in Mexico” (2020). Her most recent book: “En busca de una habitación propia: miradas feministas a once autoras latinoamericanas”, Editorial Grano de Sal, 2024. She’s also the author of innumerable amount of essays, and other books, as “Elena Garro: lectura múltiple de una personalidad compleja”, coauthored with Gabriela Mora. Et Al, 2018.
Militarization of Migrant Detention
Alethia is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Legal Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Coordinator of the National Laboratory on Diversities at UNAM. She specialises in gender and migration, immigration detention, bureaucracies, gender-based violence and women’s autonomy. She is a visiting scholar at the School of Law of the University of Warwick with the project “The effects of border militarisation in Mexico and Poland on the international protection and human rights of migrants”. She is an Affiliate Professor at the College of Social and Behavioural Sciences of the University of Arizona, where she teaches courses on gender-based violence. In 2021, she received the National University Distinction Award for Young Scholars 2021 in social science research. She recently became a member of Border Criminologies.
