Dr Ana Laura Zavala Guillen LLB Hons, MA, MA, PhD

2019. PhD in Geography sponsored by the University of Sheffield Prize Scholarship at the University of Sheffield, UK.
Doctoral Thesis title: “Geographies of Marronage: Dispossession and Resistance in the Last Palenque.”
Subject areas covered include Lecturing, Assessment & Feedback, Small Group Teaching: Seminar Facilitation, Thesis Writing Principles and Practice, Academic Culture: Transitions & Expectations, Small Group Teaching: Seminar Facilitation, Problem Solving and Small Group Teaching: Laboratory Demonstration.

2012. MA in Conflict Resolution sponsored by the Rotary International Peace Fellowship at the University of Bradford, UK (with Distinction)
Subject areas covered include Introduction to Peace Studies, Conflict Resolution Theory, Gender Conflict and Development, and Applied Conflict Resolution.

2008. MA in Human Rights sponsored by the Fundación Carolina Fellowship at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain (with Distinction)
Subject areas covered include Human Rights Theory and Vulnerable Groups and Human Rights.

2006. Bachelor of Laws, the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina (with Honours)
Subject areas covered include Agrarian and Land Law, International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law.

Dr Zavala Guillen is currently an ESRC postdoctoral fellow in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences of the University of Birmingham. During her postgraduate studies, she worked for four years as a doctoral research fellow supported by the prestigious University Prize Scholarship at the University of Sheffield, where she was one of five chosen fellows out of more than 1,000 applicants. Furthermore, she received the highly competitive Rotary Peace Fellowship to study an MA in Conflict Resolution at Bradford University. She also worked for one year as a postgraduate fellow supported by the Fundación Carolina Fellowship to complete an MA in Human Rights at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain.

Her current research focuses on the analysis of the ongoing dynamics of territorial dispossession and community resistance of the descendants of fugitives from slavery since colonial times to the present day. Her doctoral findings currently support community land rights claims in the context of the peace process in Colombia. As a human rights lawyer, she has spent most of her career working in transitional justice empowering victims after gross human rights violations in places such as Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala and Western Sahara.

Historical and Legal Geography. Race and Maroon and Black Studies in the Americas and the Caribbean, Counter-Hegemonic Territories, Socio-Territorial Movements and Resistance, Legal Precarity and Territorial Justice, Decolonial and Post-Decolonial Theory from a Latin American perspective, and Radical Participatory Research Methods. Activist Scholar.