PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Dr. Jasmin Hristov
Dr. Jasmin Hristov is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Department of History and Sociology and Associate Member of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She is currently the Chair of the Development Sociology Research Cluster of the Canadian Sociological Association (CSA). She holds a PhD in Sociology from York University and a Graduate Diploma in Latin American Studies. Jasmin is the author of Paramilitarism and Neoliberalism: Violent Systems of Capital Accumulation in Colombia and Beyond (Pluto Press 2014) and Blood and Capital: the Paramilitarization of Colombia (Ohio University Press 2009). Her work includes refereed articles featured in the Canadian Review of Sociology, Journal of Peasant Studies, Latin American Perspectives, Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, Journal of Islamic Studies and Humanities, Labour, Capital and Society, and Social Justice.
Before joining UBC Okanagan in 2017 she taught at the University of Toronto, McMaster University, York University and Trent University. Jasmin holds a B.Ed. in Education and prior to earning her PhD she taught at various secondary schools in Toronto. She is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and has carried out research in Colombia, Brazil, Cuba, Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico. For the past fifteen years, Jasmin has studied in depth the phenomenon of paramilitary violence. She is the lead editor of the volume The Political Violence of Capital: Paramilitary Formations in Global Perspectives under contract with Routledge. Jasmin’s work has received considerable attention outside the academy. She has been interviewed by various radio and other media outlets, has written expert-witness reports for trials in the US and Canada, and has been asked by private sector companies to provide consultations on the subject of paramilitary violence in the mining sector. She has been involved in numerous local and global solidarity initiatives and mobilizations such as World Social Forum and the Congress against the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
Jasmin is presently the principal investigator for the project Violence and Land Dispossession in Central America and Mexico, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and UBC’s Hampton Fund. She is also leading a partnership with the Honduran NGO Association for Democracy and Human Rights in Honduras (ASOPODEHU) aimed at integrating academic and community research expertise to systematically document the prevalence, patterns, and impacts of human rights violations in Honduras through the creation of a Human Rights Monitor (funded by SSHRC’s Partnership Engage Grant).
COLLABORATORS
Dina Meza, Honduras
Dina Mesa is a Honduran journalist, human rights defender and a founder of the NGO Association for Democracy and Human Rights (ASOPODEHU) which supports and defends the rights of journalists, indigenous people, women, LGTBI people and other disenfranchised groups in Honduras. She is the creator of the alternative media outlet Paso de Animal Grande (http://www.pasosdeanimalgrande.com/index.php/en/ ) where news on human rights violations and attacks on freedom of expression are documented. Dina is the recipient of various journalism awards including Amnesty International’s Journalism Under Threat and Oxfam’s Freedom of Expression Award (2014). Presently Dina and Jasmin have formed a partnership to create a Human Rights Monitor of Honduras which will integrate academic and community research expertise to systematically document the prevalence, patterns, and impacts of human rights violations in Honduras.
Claudia Barrientos, Guatemala
Claudia is a Guatemalan sociologist with an MA in Latin American Cultural Studies from FLACSO (Latin American Social Sciences Institute). She has worked as a researcher with FLACSO for ten years and has expertise in the areas of political participation and citizenship, poverty, and international migration.
She is currently a researcher with the Center for Research in Geography and Geomatics in Mexico, working on a project that examines territory, geopolitics and society in the cross-border region between Mexico and Guatemala.
Karina Guardado, El Salvador
Karina Guardado holds an MA in Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics and is presently a PhD Candidate in Education, at the National University of El Salvador. She is the Head of Information Technology and Communications and is also a Consultant for the Distance Education Project at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, in partnership with the Organization of Ibero-American States (OIS), Office of Human Rights Education.
DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER
Benjamin Cornejo
Benjamin Cornejo has more than 20 years of experience as Project Manager. In his early carrier, he was the IT Director at El Salvador’s Ministry of Finance for eight years. Later on, he coordinated international projects in Latin America and Canada related to information technology, education and, human rights. Benjamin also has significant experience in areas such as strategic and operative planning, marketing & commercialization, knowledge management, financial management for projects, report writing, business management, monitoring and evaluation and audiovisual production.
Benjamin has a B.A. in Electrical Engineering from El Salvador, graduate diplomas in Spatial Analysis and Geographical Information Systems from Ryerson University as well as Research Commercialization and Innovation diploma from George Brown College in Canada. He also studied film production. In November 2012 Benjamin was awarded two Peter Gerretsen awards for film editing from Ryerson. In March 2013 TVO selected one of his videos among the best five in the contest “Poverty in 5”, and in 2015 one of his short videos was finalist in the EXPO 2015 in Milano, Italy. He has produced more than 20 short documentaries focused on cultural and social issues.
For the last four years he has been supporting the implementation of an On-line Public University education project in El Salvador. Currently, Benjamin is completing a Master’s Degree in Youth and Peace Culture in El Salvador.
His works as a filmmaker and a research assistant for the project Violence and Land Dispossession in Central America and Mexico.
RESEARCH ASSISTANTS
Paula Jimenez Argumosa, University of Toronto
Paula is an international student from Spain completing her final year of an Honour’s Bachelor Degree at the University of Toronto, specializing in sociology and commerce.
Pursuing her passion in political sociology, social movements and feminism, she has been a part of multiple projects. She was a research intern for Visualizing Palestine, an NGO that raises awareness about the issue through info graphics and visual data. In Madrid she worked for Feminicidio.net, the only organization in Spain that collects data on gender violence and feminicides with the objective of dismantling the systemic violence against women and non-binary people in the country. During the summer of 2018 she was part of Acampada Feminista Sol, a feminist settlement in the center of Madrid that served as a platform for survivors of gender violence. In June of 2017 she did independent research in Mexico and established contact with a movement of forcibly displaced rural families in Chiapas, which subsequently formed part of the project Violence and Land Dispossession. Paula’s contributions to the project include academic and non-academic literature review, transcription of interviews, photography, as well as Spanish-English translation and sub-titles for a documentary.
University of Toronto, email: p.jimenez.argumosa@gmail.com
Robert MacDonald, UBC Okanagan
Robert MacDonald is an International Relations student at the University of British Colombia, Okanagan Campus. His studies focus on International Development, Languages, and Technology. He has researched security and violence in Latin America and is a member of the Canadian Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CALACS). His contribution to this project has been a hybrid-task of research assistance and website development.
email: robmacdonald-1@live.ca
Carlos Ogaz, CIESAS, Mexico
Carlos is a Mexican sociologist with an MA in Political Sociology from the Research Institute Dr. Jose Maria Luis Mora in Mexico City. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Centre for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS), Southeast Branch, Mexico. Carlos specializes in the study social movements and organizations. His dissertation focuses on the intersection between violence and forced displacement in Chiapas.
Carlos’ responsibilities in the project involve interviewing, documentary photography and interview transcription.
CIESAS, Chiapas, Mexico, email: korn.cao@gmail.com
Jamie Arnett
Jamie is a Sociology student at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan graduating in 2019. She is planning to do an MA in Sociology, focusing on discourses surrounding the normalization and rationalization of human rights violations generated by resource extraction, land dispossession, and environmental degradation. For the project Violence and Land Dispossession, she is presently working on a data inventory of Canadian corporations implicated in human rights issues in Honduras as well as assisting with documentary sub-titles.
Email: jamiejamerson79@gmail.com
Natalia Peñuela, UBC Okanagan
Natalia is a Graduate Student in Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies within the theme of Latin American & Iberian Studies at the University of British Columbia. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations from the University of British Columbia Okanagan and an International Development diploma from the Okanagan College. Her current research and thesis topic are centered in the situation of Social Leaders and Human Rights Defenders in the context of the Peace Accords in Colombia. Natalia’s research interests include intersectionality, global politics, social justice, development, human rights, transitional politics, historic memory, critical security, Colombia, Latin America, Canada, among others. Natalia’s contributions to the project include the documentation of human rights violations, Spanish/English/Spanish translation and editing, blog’s news monitoring, among other tasks.
Email: natalia.penuelagallo@alumni.ubc.ca
