Luis Carlos Sotelo Castro
Luis C. Sotelo Castro is an artist-researcher with a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of Northampton (UK). He is an Associate Visiting Professor in the Humanities at United College (University of Waterloo) and Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at Concordia University, Montréal (Québec). Between 2016 and 2021, he held the position of Canada Research Chair in Oral History Performance at Concordia. With funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, he established in 2018 the Acts of Listening Lab, a hub for research-creation on the transformative power of listening, in events created by socially engaged performance and theatre artists, to first-person narratives by people impacted by violence.
Luis C Sotelo Castro’s current research is funded by a Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant; it is at the intersection of testimonial performance, restorative and transitional justice, and listening research. In collaboration with artistic teams in Canada and Colombia, he has reconstructed a restorative transitional justice public hearing from Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (a war crimes tribunal) using documentary acting techniques and choral singing to engage performance audiences as listeners-participants in open dialogues addressing individual and collective harms, and as a means of contributing to social recovery. To do his work, he collaborates with victims’ organizations, transitional justice institutions and a multi-disciplinary network of scholars and practitioners from Canada, Colombia and beyond, including social psychologists, human rights lawyers, sociologists, and anthropologists.
Select Publications
Brignol, Arnaud, Paas, Anita, Sotelo Castro, Luis Carlos, St-Onge, David, Beltrame, Giovanni, and Coffey, Emily B.J. (2024) “Overcoming Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Challenges and Opportunities in Cognitive Neuroscience.” Neuropsychologia, no. 200, pp. 1 – 11.
Sotelo Castro, Luis Carlos. (2023) “Listening Performances as Transformative Mechanisms in the Context of Restorative Transitional Justice Scenarios: The Colombian Case.” In Listening, Community Engagement, and Peacebuilding: International Perspectives, edited by Bodie, Graham D, Worthington, Debra, and Beyene, Zenebe. New York, NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
Sotelo Castro, Luis Carlos and Shapiro-Phim, Toni. 2023. “Listening as Common Ground: Oral History Performance for Transitional Justice.” Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 28 (1): 1–18.
Sotelo Castro, Luis C. (2023) “La Escucha Efectiva de La Voz de Las Víctimas En La Jep Como Un Acto Restaurativo.” Instituto Colombo-Alemán para la Paz. https://www.instituto-capaz.org/la-escucha-efectiva-de-la-voz-de-las-victimas-en-la-jep-como-un-acto-restaurativo-nuevo-documento-de-trabajo-capaz/
Sotelo Castro, Luis Carlos. (2020) “Not Being Able to Speak Is Torture: Performing Listening to Painful Narratives.” International Journal of Transitional Justice 14 (1): 220–31. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijtj/ijz033.
Sotelo Castro, Luis C. (2019) Facilitating Voicing and Listening in the Context of Post-Conflict Performances of Memory. Routledge Handbooks Online. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780815354260-33.
Sotelo Castro, Luis C. (2018) “‘Mr President, Open the Door Please, I Want to Be Free’: Participatory Walking as Aesthetic Strategy for Transforming a Hostage Space.” In Performance and Civic Engagement, edited by Ananda Breed and Tim Prentki, 243–67. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.