Ulrike Capdepón, Dipl.-Pol. (Ph.D. at the University of Hamburg and the Institute for Latin American Studies of the German Institute for Global and Regional Studies). She was Marie Curie-Fellow at the Center for Human and Social Sciences (CCHS) of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in Madrid where she is part of the research project "The politics of memory." It was a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC project on "Narratives of terror and disappearance in Argentina." After having worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights (ISHR) at Columbia University (New York), she was a lecturer at the Program in Latin American Studies (PLAS) at Princeton University. Apart from being a researcher in the project “Reconstructing Memory in the City”, she currently coordinates the project “Sense in common,” both at the University of Konstanz.

 

Recent publications (selection)

Books

2015. Vom Fall Pinochet zu den Verschwundenen des Spanischen Bürgerkrieges: Die Auseinandersetzungmit Diktatur und Menschenrechtsverletzungen in Chile und Spanien. Bielefeld: Global Studies, Transcript.

 

Special editions and collective books

2020 (con Jill Strauss y Aline Sierp). Museums and Monuments: Memorials of Violent Pasts in Urban Spaces, Special Issue: History & Memory, Indiana University Press, Vol. 32, No. 1.

2020, con Rosario Figari Layús.The Impact of Human Rights Prosecutions: Insights from European, Latin American, and African Post-Conflict Societies, Leuven University Press.

 

Articles in magazines and books

2020. “Challenging the Symbolic Representation of the Franco Dictatorship: The Street Name-Controversy in Madrid.” In Special Issue: History & Memory, Indiana University Press, Vol. 32, No. 1, p. 100-130.

2019.  “Der Streit um Francos Leichnam. Das ›Tal der Gefallenen‹ und die Exhumierung des Diktators.” [The dispute about Franco’s remains. The ›Valley of the Fallen‹ and the exhumation of the dictator]. In Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften (ZfK). Schwerpunkt Forensik, No. 1, p. 29-42.

2019. “The Selectivity of Universal Jurisdiction: The History of Transnational Human Rights Prosecutions in Latin America and Spain.” In Quataert, Jean/Wildenthal, Lora (eds.) The History of Human Rights, Routledge: New York, p. 507-522.

2018. “Memorias familiares, identidades reprimidas y la vida política de los cadáveres: El significado actual de las narrativas de parentesco en las exhumaciones de la Guerra Civil española.” In Gatti, Gabriel/Mahlke, Kirsten (eds.) Sangre y filiación en los relatos del dolor. Frankfurt a. M.: Verfuert, Iberoamericana, p. 115-131.

2018. “La ‘Querella Argentina’ y la represión franquista: memorias locales, procesos de justicia transnacionales y ‘efectos rebote.’” In Eser, Patrick/Schrott, Angela/Winter, Ulrich (eds.) Transiciones democráticas y memoria en el mundo hispánico. Miradas transatlánticas: historia, cultura, política. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, Estudios hispánicos en el contexto global, p. 235-252.

2017. “La representación del Holocausto en libros escolares de historia chilenos, españoles y argentinos: ¿Hacia la inscripción en un marco universal de los Derechos Humanos? In Fracapane, Karel (ed.) La enseñanza del Holocausto en América Latina. Los desafíos para educadores y legisladores, UNESCO: Paris, p. 174-184.

 

Research project as a fellow of CALAS (transatlantic tandem with Mariana Eva Pérez)

Title: Childhood, captivity, and disappearance in Argentina. Surviving children in processes against humanity and sites of memory

Abstract: This tandem project aims to investigate the presence of surviving children in the legal and museum narratives that give meaning to the former clandestine detention and torture centers (CCDyT) of the dictatorship converted into places of memory. In the trials reopened since 2003, the logic of the evidence leads to the accumulation of cases around the clandestine centers where the crimes were committed. These places are material evidence and as such are preserved at the disposal of the courts. In turn, judicial decisions have a privileged impact on the narratives of memory sites, as they produce or validate historical accounts that give meaning to the facts judged and the material evidence preserved. We are interested in questioning the way in which these spaces of violence are perceived and re-signified by child victims, both those who remained kidnapped in those places and those who relate to them based on knowing that their parents were there. Establishing a nexus between the former CCDyT and the statements and judicial decisions that are organized around them, we ask ourselves: What place do child victims of the dictatorship occupy in judicial processes based on their role as plaintiffs, victims, and/or witnesses? What particular characteristics do their testimonials have? How are children who passed through concentration camps presented in the scripts of today's museums/sites of memory? How do the voices of former child victims influence and stress the dominant narrative and help change the discourse? In short: how do trials against humanity and memorial sites account for the presence and voices of child victims?