Introduction

A Journal of Dialogue, Research, and Advocacy 

Stephen Parks, University of Virginia
Lori Shorr, Temple University 

With Issue #3 of Transformations, our first year as a journal is complete. 

Beginning a journal is very similar to creating a garden. While it is exciting to see the new plants begin to emerge, experienced gardeners will tell you that the real work is the soil, the dirt out of which the plants grow. You need to tend to the soil. You need to make the dirt rich and fertile if plants are going to grow and thrive year after year. 

In many ways, our first year has been about preparing the soil for future growth. With each issue, we have worked to publish authors, essays, photography, art, and interviews, which demonstrate our commitment to creating a space where dialogue and progress on issues of peace, reconciliation, and human rights can produce results. We have featured the voices of leading public advocates on these issues, such as Yevgeniya Chirikova and Manasseh Mathiang, focused on historic and current human rights abuses, such as our focus on Australia and Zimbabwe, and presented the work of those developing solutions to issues such as arbitrarily detained refugees and families forced into exile. Undergirding all of these moments was a belief that in publishing such a diversity of approaches, we might model how conversations among those in different professional and public spaces, could create new pathways not just for knowledge, but for change.  

In this sense, our first issues have highlighted how research and advocacy might find common cause; might discover how the work of the one can support the work of the other. In the culminating issue of our first year, we want to highlight the power of dialogue, the power of an individual voice joining into discussion with a friend, a colleague, or, even, their own community. We want to use this issue of Transformations to nourish the soil of our journal to ensure that the personal voice, with its unique vocabulary and intonations of values and beliefs, finds space in our work. We want to value how the bringing together of voices creates new spaces for work to be invented, created, then completed. Ultimately, Transformation is premised on the belief that everyone is an intellectual if given a platform to share their insights.  

Our latest issue begins with an interview with Nobel Peace Prize nominee Felix Maradiaga, who discusses how the experience of living in forced exile as a child, then witnessing the cruelty of violent movements for change in Nicaragua that resulted in an authoritarian leader, ultimately led him to a life committed to non-violence and human rights. We then move to a Steve Parks’ conversation with Rotimi Akinsete, who argues that violence crosses over generations, whether that violence occurs within a family or within the historical context of colonization. Akinsete then embeds his discussion of the current political context facing Black men in Great Britain within a legacy of colonization in African and the Caribbean. He argues only through such self-awareness can we gain our full agency. Brandon Brown follows. In a discussion with Lori Shorr, Brandon Brown used the context of a public school located in a community in Philadelphia plagued by gun violence to share insights into how those who have faced trauma – as well as those that work with traumatized individuals –  can engage with a series of pragmatic practices which can allow a person to manage the trauma which is impacting their daily lives. As importantly, Brown shares how we, as friends, colleagues, staff members and caring community members, can support those suffering from trauma as they navigate daily life.  

Trauma, however, is more than personal. As Maradiaga, Akinsete, and Brown recognize, trauma can also inform a nation’s history. It can shape how a nation navigates its way from a violent or authoritarian past into the peaceful and just future. For this reason, we widen the lens of our investigation. Raphael Ivan Reyes Juarez’s Testimonio traces how global forces compelling members from his hometown to cross over the Mexican border for work in the United States led to the collapse of traditional community values. Embedding this testimonial in the context of his own academic education, Reyes finds hope in the ability of his community to regenerate and rebuild after a period of drug and gang warfare. Widening the lens further, Jhanisse Vaca Daza and Chris Carter argue for the unique role of nonviolent social movements to build a new sense of collective identity within the context of Bolivia. Here Vaca Daza reflects on the experiences which led her to develop the national Rio de Pie environmental movement, the first movement of its kind in Bolivia. In the process, they both also articulate the way in which academic research and advocate experience can mutually inform the other while supporting a common vision of the future.  

Moving forward, we hope that you will continue to find Transformations a fertile and rich territory in which to share your insights about advocacy, research, and dialogue. We hope that it cannot only provide an understanding of the conflicts and abuses which mark this current moment, but also provide a pathway to a peaceful future. While many of the discussions in this issue discuss the violence and trauma that many experience today, we also believe they are embedded in a sense of hope – a hope that is not a wish but a commitment that collective labors create change. We named the journal Transformations because we share such hope. We believe transformation is possible.  

And we want Transformations to be the space where such work can be imagined, developed, and put into practice.  

We look forward to learning from each other as Transformations continues to move forward.