Collaborators – Voces y Caras

Dr. Constanza López Baquero is an associate professor of Spanish at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, where she teaches Latin American literature and culture. She obtained her Ph.D. in Hispanic Literatures at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her research interests include Latin American literatures of the XX and XXI centuries, women writers, autobiography and testimonio, gender and violence, film and documentary, human rights and activism, migrations, and hip hop and youth cultures. She is author of Trauma, memoria y cuerpo: el testimonio femenino en Colombia (1985-2000), 2012. She is currently working on a manuscript for a book titled Collective Efforts: Reterritorializing the Spaces of Violence in Colombia.

As part of her commitment to teaching she has brought to the UNF campus projects that connect the students to the community and the world. Voces y Caras: Hispanic Communities of North Florida allows the students to not only connect to the Hispanic community outside of the university but to create a community within the classroom. Her other project, Embroidering for Peace and Memory is an annual event that takes place at UNF to commemorate Women’s History Month. Every March, students, faculty and staff from across campus gather to embroider on pieces of white cloth messages of peace and the stories of people around the world who have endured the violation of their rights.

Michael Boyles received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Florida State University and has accumulated more than 35 years of eclectic experiences. His design credentials span a multitude of disciplines that incorporate print, environmental design, signage, trade shows, product design, package design, illustration, photography, story telling, and web design. He is a founding member and past president of The American Institute of Graphic Arts/Jacksonville Chapter. He has taught graphic design and concept for more than 20 years at the college level, as well as advertising, illustration and color theory at Florida State University and Florida State College at Jacksonville.

Michael has been with UNF since 2004 and is currently the graphic designer for the Center for Instruction and Research Technology (CIRT). As a creative collaborator since the project’s inception in 2012, he has assisted with the design and execution of the Voces y caras website as well as the annual fall exhibition of the project held in the Thomas G. Carpenter Library. His ongoing support for this includes his presentation of Voces y caras with Dr. López at the inaugural UNF Digital Humanities Institute Showcase in November, 2016, and assisting with the 2018 conference presentation of the project in Mexico City.

Victoria Farfán Lasso is an International Relations student at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. In her studies, she focuses on the political and social environment in the United States and Europe. She has huge interest in the extent of immigration around the world. Driven by her motivation on this topic, she started her dissertation project based on the immigration at the border of Colombia and Panama targeting the policies established between both countries in order to ensure safety and control during the immigration process.

Victoria started her internship assisting Dr. López in the project Voces y Caras: Hispanic Communities of North Florida in July of 2018. She has collaborated in creation of this website and has assisted with the exhibition of Voces y Caras in the Thomas G. Carpenter Library. She has also been involved with the diffusion of the first Hispanic Film Festival of Jacksonville.

Brianna Armenta is a senior at the University of North Florida where she is studying both Spanish and French. She is of Mexican descent and is interested in the condition of women in Mexico and the crisis at the United States and Mexican border. She aspires to be a professor at the university level teaching Spanish and related topics.

In the Spring of 2022, she interned with the project Voces y Caras: Hispanic Communities of North Florida under the supervision of Dr. Constanza López Baquero. She focuses on transcribing interviews and publishing subtitles. This requires listening to each interview with the help of a transcribing program, correcting grammatical errors, dictating speech, and eliminating unnecessary filler words. She has participated in the 2022 conference of Florida Digital Humanities Consortium and the Student Symposium hosted by the UNF Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures.

Student Participants