Email: feldmana@uic.edu

Dr Andreas E. Feldmann is anAssociate Professor in the Latin American and Latino Studies Program and Department of Political Science and Principal Investigator of the Global Immigration Cluster Initiative at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He investigates topics at the intersection of comparative politics and international relations with a focus on Latin America. His research interests include forced migration, political violence and terrorism, human rights and South-South cooperation. He is the co-author of New Migration Patterns in the Americas: Challenges for the 21^st Century (Palgrave 2018), the Routledge Handbook on Latin American Migration (2022) and has published articles in journals including International Affairs, Politics and Society, Terrorism and Political Violence, Annual Review of Sociology, Forced Migration Review and Migración y Desarrollo, among others. Feldmann has received grants from the Ford Foundation (2020-2021), the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) (2006-2012), and has worked as a consultant for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (2007-8), the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (2000‒6), Estado de la Nación, Costa Rica, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2014-). He previously worked at the Instituto de Ciencia Política of the Universidad Católica de Chile (2005‒2014) and the Human Rights Program of the University of Chicago (2003‒5). He earned a Ph.D. in political science at the University of Notre Dame.

Email: camilarodriguezmaldonado@gmail.com

Ms Maldonado is a Colombian lawyer with wide experience in developing and managing legal initiatives in Latin American countries and providing legal assistance and consultation of human rights groups and victims of human rights abuses across the Americas. For example, she has collaborated with the Oxford Reports on International Law in Domestic Courts (Oxford University Press) for Latin America, analyzing domestic interpretations and applications of international law, including customary international law and treaties.

Email: jschirmer820@gmail.com

Dr Jennifer Schirmer holds a PhD. in Anthropology and is a Research Professor and Projects Director of Conflict Analysis, Armed Actors and Peace Dialogues at the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo. Between 1996 and 2004, she was a fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, the School of Public Health, a Henry Luce Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, and an Associate of the Program on Non-Violent Sanctions and Cultural Survival at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Dr Schirmer has expert knowledge of both the historical and current conditions in Colombia and has 16 years of experience working on and in Colombia (2000-2016). Dr Schirmer has organized a series of dialogues among multiple sectors of Colombian society (parliamentarians, former guerrillas, the armed forces, journalists, human rights NGOs) to discuss various topics in preparation for the peace process  (land reform, paramilitarism, human rights, security, drug-trafficking, the roots and evolution of the insurgencies, rural poverty, among others). In 2012, with the initiation of the public phase of the peace talks, the Colombian negotiators requested that Dr Schirmer organize 25 Seminars to train their advisors in ceasefire, disarmament and demobilization. This group of 20 officers and civilians became the Technical Commission at the negotiating table in Cuba, responsible for writing the protocols and structuring, together with the FARC, of the recently signed ceasefire and disarmament.

Email: matthew.brown@bristol.ac.uk

Professor Matthew Brown is Professor in Latin American History at the University of Bristol, England. He is the author of four books and has been researching Colombian history since 2000. His most recent projects are ‘Bringing Memories in from the Margins: Inclusive Transitional Justice and Creative Memory Processes for Reconciliation in Colombia‘ (2018-22) and ‘Truth from the Margins’ (2020-22), funded by Minciencias and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Email: sean.loughna@gmail.com

Dr Sean Loughna is a political economist with experience working on a range of forced migration issues within the UN, academia and NGOs. His PhD thesis examines the political economy of internal displacement in Colombia and he has spent some 15 years examining issues related to conflict, displacement and socioeconomic issues in the country. Sean spent over ten years working at the Refugee Studies Centre in Oxford, which included managing the content of Forced Migration Online, and for six years was as a University Lecturer in Forced Migration in Berlin. His publications include co-editing two editions of UNHCR’s flagship book The State of the World’s Refugees (OUP 2000 & 2006). He is currently working as a consultant researcher and advisor for governmental and UN clients.