Kroc Institute hosts Colombian digital archive at Notre Dame
The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame has launched the Legacy Project, a new initiative to migrate a digital archive of more than 200,000 audiovisual and textual materials from the Colombian Truth Commission to the University’s servers and to develop a global platform.
In collaboration with the Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society, the Clingen Family Center for the Study of Modern Ireland, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and the Colombian Truth Commission, a myriad of narratives and memories related to Colombia’s 52-year armed conflict will be translated into English and made accessible to the world in perpetuity.
The collection will be a rich resource for researchers, educators, scholars, policymakers, peacebuilders, artists and creators to advance transitional justice, human rights and the centrality of victims, across their respective fields. By making this national heritage globally accessible, the Legacy Project will inform and shape peacebuilding and policymaking around the world.
“This is a project that has been in the making for many years,” said Josefina Echavarría Alvarez, director of the Peace Accords Matrix and the lead for the Legacy Project. “Here at the University of Notre Dame, we want to safeguard all these wonderful digital files and further develop and explore them together.
“Looking to the decades to come, we are aiming to build this project on four pillars: research, policy, practice and teaching. With the help of our partner institutes from the Keough School and across the University, we know the potential of this project for peacebuilding and research is boundless.”
Notre Dame was selected as the host of this archive because of the relationship between the Colombian Truth Commission and the Kroc Institute’s Barometer Initiative, which oversees the technical verification and monitoring of the implementation of the 2016 Colombian Peace Agreement.
“The Kroc Institute has always been engaged with Colombia and our work,” said Maria Paula Prada, adviser to the presidency of the Colombian Truth Commission. “Its engagement with building peace around the world is inspiring. Because they are an important ally for us, we feel secure in allowing them to preserve our archive online and therefore guarantee its access to any individual around the world.”
With the Legacy Project, the University of Notre Dame advances a commitment to integral human development after violent conflict and contributes to lessons about peace processes, reconciliation, clarification and preservation of the truth.
In support of this project, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies have developed grant opportunities to encourage academics and researchers to use materials from the Legacy Project and the Colombian Truth Commission within their work.
Learn more about the Legacy Project at kroc.nd.edu/legacyproject.
Originally published by kroc.nd.edu on Jan. 31.
atLatest Research
- Notre Dame senior wins Best Publication Image AwardNotre Dame senior Kevin Armknecht of the Berthiaume Institute for Precision Health has been recognized by ND’s Integrated Imaging Facility (NDIIF) with the Best Publication Imaging Award, based on images he created in a recent Nanoscale Advances publication. Armknecht, a pre-professional studies…
- A&L and engineering faculty to create new curriculum for responsible computingFaculty from the College of Arts and Letters and the College of Engineering are working together to integrate responsible computing instruction across the undergraduate curriculum, to better equip students to think critically and thoughtfully about technology. The project, “Computing, Culture, and Society: A Community-based, Intersectional Approach to Responsible Computing Across the Curriculum,” is led by Katherine Walden and Karla Badillo-Urquiola.
- Keough School establishes two new doctoral programsNotre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs has established two new doctoral programs in sustainable development and peace studies. The peace studies and sustainable development programs will enable doctoral students in the Keough School to examine from different perspectives the intersection of poverty, the environment, violent conflict and peace. Both programs will enroll students beginning in fall 2025.
- Robert Norton earns A&L Research Achievement Award for his transformative impact on German intellectual history“My interest is in the invisible, or at least the hard-to-discern, currents of thought that inform large cultural phenomena," Robert Norton said. "My scholarly career is devoted to understanding the nature of the impact and what lies underneath and what was lost.”
- ISLA Funds Twelve Projects Examining “Technology and the Common Good” through 2023-24 Annual Research Theme Grant ProgramLast spring, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts announced “Technology and the Common Good” as its annual research theme for AY 2023-2024. Taking to heart the notion that technology is a subject of inquiry not only for science and engineering but also the liberal arts, ISLA invited proposals…
- Eleven Notre Dame students, alumni awarded NSF Graduate Research FellowshipsA dozen current or former University of Notre Dame students have been awarded National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships, with an additional nine singled out for honorable mention for the award.