Pembroke Center

PhD 2025, Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University

Dissertation: “That town is a red zone”: Geographies of the Colombian Armed Conflict in 21st Century Testimonial Narratives”

María Camila's research and teaching interests include Latin American literary and cultural studies, testimonial and memory studies, Colombian and Latin American history, cultural geography, and digital humanities.

Her book project builds on her doctoral research to trace the evolution of testimonial narratives across different phases of the Colombian armed conflict and peacebuilding efforts in the 21st century. It analyzes a range of contemporary Colombian testimonial narratives (from testimonial novels, to testimonios, and journalistic chronicles) to examine how conflict and trauma reshape the relationship between territories and their inhabitants. By proposing a spatial turn or focus, in the study of testimonial literature, her work contributes to scholarship on collective memory in Colombia and Latin America and highlights the transformative potential of testimonial practices. Engaging with memory studies, cultural geography, history, ecocriticism, and ontological pluralism, her research shows how testimonial narratives resist the homogenization of memory and support processes of dialogue, reparation, and reconciliation. 

Her peer-reviewed article, “Hacia una redefinición de los territorios testimoniales: la naturaleza como testigo en Cuando los pájaros no cantaban, de la Comisión de la Verdad,” was published in Visitas al Patio. She has presented scholarly papers at conferences and symposia in the U.S. and abroad, and has organized conferences and participated in workshops focused on Latin American Studies and Digital Humanities topics. She also holds an M.A. in Digital Humanities from Loyola University Chicago and a B.A. in Literature from the Universidad de los Andes (Colombia). At Northwestern, her doctoral research has been supported by the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.