Latin American scholarship, activism is first gender studies topic

The Women's and Gender Studies Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln announces the first event of its fall colloquium series. "Building Dignity: From Scholarship to Activism in Latin America," is 7 p.m. Sept. 13 at the Nebraska Union, 14th and R streets. The event is free and open to the public.

An event with a dynamic blend of lecture, poetry, photography, and advocacy, it features Paul Dosh, associate professor of political science at Macalester College, and Emily Hedin, a master's student in international development at the University of Oxford.

Equipped with neither pantry nor toilet, the needs of Peru's shantytown settlers are fundamental --food, shelter, clean water -- yet with just a modest level of support, community members resolve the crises afflicting their community with breathtaking commitment and tenacious creativity. In 2008, activist scholars Hedin and Dosh founded Building Dignity, a nonprofit development organization that advances an anti-poverty agenda grounded in scholarship and grassroots action. With their Peruvian collaborators, they built the Center for Development with Dignity in the impoverished district of Villa El Salvador in Lima. The center focuses on popular education and communication, human rights and cultivating youth and neighborhood leadership.

Hedin speaks four languages and her work in Peru, Senegal, England and the United States has been supported by fellowships from the Fulbright Program, Phillips Foundation, Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and Upper Midwest Human Rights Fellowship Program. A Minnesota native, Hedin is completing a master's degree in international development at the University of Oxford, after which she plans to return to Peru.

Dosh is a Fulbright-Hays scholar, a Montessori educator, and a spoken word poet. Trained at Carleton College and University of California, Berkeley, he is the author of "Demanding the Land: Urban Popular Movements in Peru and Ecuador" (Penn State, 2010).

WRITER: Catherine Medici-Thiemann