Islandia

Islandia, also known as Carina Emilia Guzmán, (she or they) is a Doctoral Candidate at the Faculty of Information and the Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. They have an Undergraduate degree in History and Master's in Geography from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Supervised by Dr. T.L. Cowan and Dr. Jas Rault, in their dissertation, “Stor(y)ing Mi Desmadre: Trans-Feminist and Queer Community Archival Digital Custodial Praxes in Latin America,” they develop a speculative-pragmatic framework to study how lesbian and trans communities use histories of performance art and nightlife, improvised territories and the Latin American concept of memoria (counter-hegemonic historiographic text that emerges from resistance movements) to activate archival and story-telling digital initiatives. This work emerges from her own participation in lesbian nightlife community-building and archive-making in Mexico, as well as her work as co-editor at the Cabaret Commons (carbaretcommons.org). Guzmán is furthermore a Connaught International Fellow, an Inaugural Dissertation Fellow at the Queer and Trans Research Lab and an Inaugural Doctoral Fellow at the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative.