Robin Reineke receives award for visual and oral history in the borderlands

HRTS faculty member Robin Reineke has been chosen by UArizona's Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry (CCI) as one of the first two recipients of the Mellon-Fronteridades Faculty Fellowship program. Each awardee will receive $15,000 over a five-month period to complete innovative border research and curriculum projects. The Mellon-Fronteridades Faculty fellows from the College of Humanities and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences aim to center and elevate local communities and dialogues in UArizona scholarship and education.

Reineke’s project Forensic Citizenship in the Borderlands, is an interdisciplinary visual and oral history project that will document, analyze and share the stories of civilian forensic experts on both sides of the Arizona-Sonora border. The project will create an interactive website to highlight the work and explore forensics in the landscape of the borderlands.

“Our project, Forensic Citizenship in the Borderlands, looks at an emerging movement where border inhabitants are learning the tools of forensic science and technology to monitor state abuses and find and identify the border’s dead and disappeared. Groups like Madres Buscadoras, the Colibrí Center for Human Rights, and No More Deaths are developing powerful expertise and using it to challenge state authority in the region. The Fronteridades Faculty Fellowship, along with additional funding from the UA libraries, will allow me to equitably and respectfully collaborate with experts on each side of the border to share new narratives about the borderlands,” said Reineke.

To read more, please visit Confluencenter Announces Recipients of the Mellon-Fronteridades Faculty Fellowship.