Francesca Sorbara

Francesca holds a degree in Humanities from Venice University and a Master in International Development from Pavia University, Italy. She has been working in Human Rights and International Development for the last ten years, approximately. During this period, she has focused on Children’s Rights in social and community projects, national and international advocacy and research initiatives, training and capacity building of local and national child protection systems, in Brazil, Ethiopia, Bolivia and finally Paraguay.

Previous to her career in International NGOs, she worked as a community theatre educator in the schools and suburbs of Italy and Brazil, and never lost her original vocation for community work and expressive therapies.

With years, travels and experiences, her critical look on human rights and development issues has been deeply changing, together with her own identity and beliefs. After almost a decade in International Development and Human Rights issues, evolving from grass roots, community based positions towards more managerial roles, she has felt the deep need to take a break from project management, and return to “the human”, in order to explore older and emerging paradigms in social sciences, updating her critical perspectives and approaches, and renewing her professional vocation.

She believes that conflicts should be seen and criticized in a way that includes and analyzes the wider paradigms and structures upholding them. As a Rotary Peace Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at UNC-Chapel Hill, she is interested in developing skills to conduct participatory and applied research, exploring non-hegemonic perspectives, emerging psychosocial methodologies and post-modern and de-colonizing approaches to Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies.

Upon completion of the fellowship, she would like to work on trans-disciplinary and applied research projects with a strong anthropological component.