Our Fellows

Laura Alvarez is a political scientist with an emphasis in democratic governability and international relations. From Cali, Colombia, Laura works at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana's Institute of Intercultural Studies (Instituto de Estudios Interculturales), which is known for its involvement in both scholarly and advocacy work. Laura's position as researcher has enabled her to work on a number of peacebuilding and applied research projects with communities that have been victims of the Colombian conflict, and that are working towards reconciliation. Recent projects include establishing a dialogue between indigenous communities and sugar cane industrialists, and the creation of a regionally-focused post-conflict development plan in Montes de Maria that involved government, women’s and victim’s organizations, and peasant, indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities.

As an AHDA fellow, Laura plans to develop a project proposal that will focus on collecting stories and testimonies about Colombian victims that have been displaced by violence, suffered human rights violations and later became heroes in their own communities, fostering reconciliation and peace building. These stories will not only be presented as reports on the Colombian post-conflict Truth Commission, but also will be made public through various media resources, so that they can be known and the victims can be acknowledged.

Laura is a Ford Foundation Fellow.

Eylem Delikanli is the co-author of the oral history book Keşke Bir Öpüp Koklasaydım (with Ozlem Delikanli) about the 1980 Coup D’État in Turkey, published in 2013. As an AHDA fellow, Eylem will work on a project titled “Institute of Silence”, which will display crucial historical moments of Turkey on a web platform. In particular, the project seeks to address the silence around the 1980 coup d’état by making publicly available the oral history interviews of those targeted by the Junta. The hope is that these interviews, paired with official documents, will expose and teach users about the human rights violations and mass atrocities that occurred in Turkey during this time.

Eylem is an ISHR Fellow.

Debby Farber is the curator of Zochrot NGO ("Remembering" in Hebrew), an Israeli organization working to promote acknowledgement and accountability for the ongoing injustices of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. Between 2012 to 2014 she served as the Civil Transitional Justice program director in Zochrot where she established the first Unofficial Truth Commission in Israel for the events of 1948 in the Negev. Debby is also currently a PhD Candidate in the Politics and Government Department in Ben Gurion University.

As an AHDA fellow, she will work on an Interdisciplinary Historical Archive for Unrecognized Bedouin Villages in the Negev, a project that aims to raise awareness of the Bedouins’ struggle and human rights violations against them, suggest options for redress, and serve as a resource for research and advocacy on behalf of Bedouin land rights.

Debby is an ISHR Fellow.

Srdjan Hercigonja is a junior researcher at the Belgrade-based Center for Comparative Conflict Studies. In addition, he serves as Director of Four Faces of Omarska. It is in this capacity that he serves as a founding member of the ‘Four Faces of Omarska’ Working Group project. Prior to joining Four Faces of Omarska, Srdjan worked for a number of local NGOs dealing with human rights issues and transitional justice; he has also worked for UNDP Serbia and the Center for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University, London. Both as an activist and scholar, Srdjan’s work is focused on conflict transformation, arts and politics in the context of post-conflict and post-genocide societies.

He has a particular interest in memorialization processes as they relate to war crimes and memory studies. As an AHDA fellow, Srdjan plans to develop a project that will focus on the ways in which victims of war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where no public recognition of atrocities has emerged, employ memory activism as a form of memorialization.

Srdjan is a Bosch Foundation Fellow.

Tonderai Kambarami is a senior researcher at the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, an umbrella organization that provides leadership and support to a coalition of 21 Human Rights Organizations in Zimbabwe. In 2015, he coordinated community outreach activities that delivered citizens’ recommendations on the operationalization of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) to Parliament. This work ultimately led to an improved draft of the bill that directly reflected the conclusions of the community outreach campaign. Since 2014, Tonderai has initiated and coordinated the National Dialogues on Zimbabwean Conflicts, a series of truth-telling and memorialization initiatives that create space for citizens within Zimbabwe and in the diaspora to address the legacy of violence resulting from major conflicts in Zimbabwe’s history.

As an AHDA Fellow, Tonderai will develop a documentation and memorialization project that seeks to ensure accountability for serious human rights violations in the Matabeleland region during the Gukurahundi era (1980-1990). The project will work towards accountability through the documentation and preservation of evidence of crimes, the facilitation of truth-telling and memorialization initiatives for victims and their families, and the exploration of mechanisms to ensure that perpetrators are held accountable.

Tonderai is a Bosch Foundation Fellow.

Lura Limani is an editor, writer, and researcher based in Prishtina, Kosovo. She is the editor-in-chief of Prishtina Insight, an English online magazine published by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) in Kosovo. For the past ten years Lura has worked as a journalist, writer, translator, researcher, and editor in Kosovo and Germany. As the editor of Prishtina Insight, she has managed the transition of the biweekly newspaper to an online platform that offers in-depth interactive stories about Kosovo and the region. She also contributes as an editor to the independent zine Lirindja and as a research affiliate to the Kosovo Oral History Initiative.

As an AHDA fellow, Lura will develop a multi-media oral history project about Kosovo and the fall of Yugoslavia. Titled “1989”, the project focuses on memories of the 1989 crisis of Yugoslavia as it unfolded in Kosovo through a television documentary and a book of first-hand recollections.

Lura is a Bosch Foundation Fellow.

Lydia Mugambe is a lawyer from Uganda who was appointed in July 2013 as a Judge of the High Court in Uganda. Prior to this appointment, Lydia worked from 2005 to 2013 at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (UNICTR), first as a Legal Officer in Chambers and later as an Appeals Counsel under the Appeals Division in the Office of the Prosecutor. In addition, Mugambe was a participant in the Global Raphael Lemkin Seminar for Genocide Prevention, hosted by the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation As an AHDA fellow, Mugambe will develop a project around women in northern Uganda who have suffered severe human rights abuses, including rape, during the over 10-year civil war affecting their community.

Lydia is an Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (AIPR) Fellow.

Oryem Nyeko works in Gulu, Uganda with the Justice and Reconciliation Project, where, as Communications and Advocacy Team Leader, he implements projects on peacebuilding and transitional justice in post-conflict northern Uganda. Currently he works on a project entitled, “Let’s Talk, Uganda” which is aimed at facilitating dialogue among young Ugandans on transitional justice and reconciliation. To this end, his work involves traditional and new media, and Oryem writes and blogs regularly on the various dimensions of dealing with the past in post-conflict settings. Oryem has also surveyed indicators for peace through the ‘Everyday Peace Indicators’ initiative.

As an AHDA fellow, the project Oryem plans to develop at Columbia is an oral history project designed to provide a space for ordinary Ugandans to share their perspectives on commonly told narratives around war, political transition and peace in Uganda’s tumultuous history.

Oryem is a Bosch Foundation Fellow.

Gina Romero is a social activist, social entrepreneur and expert in civic education, youth empowerment and democracy strengthening. She is currently Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Network for Democracy, an association of over 400 civil society organizations, networks, activists, youth, and academics in Latin America and the Caribbean that seek to strengthen democracy, human rights, sustainable development and social cohesion. Gina also serves on the Board of Directors of Fundación Mujeres por Colombia and Corporación Ocasa, where she is also advisor on innovative methodologies.

As an AHDA fellow, Gina will develop a project that focuses on empowering young people, who were not directly affected by the country’s history of violence, to serve as leaders of intergenerational historical dialogue. This project would be done in the context of the historic 2016 Colombia Peace Accord between the Government of Colombia and the FARC.

Gina is a Bosch Foundation Fellow.