ABQ Times

For 14 years, University of New Mexico Associate Professor Kimberly Gauderman has advocated for individuals facing gender-, sexuality-, and racial-based violence in their home countries who seek asylum in the U.S. Next week, she will address a crowd of UNM students, faculty, staff, alumni, and her family as the 2024 Community Engaged Research Lecture (CERL) recipient.

“Community engaged research is a core element to UNM’s scholarly enterprise and Dr. Gauderman’s work exemplifies what it means to be truly engaged in a community,” said Ellen Fisher, UNM vice president for research. “Moreover, standing with and serving as an expert witness for some of the most vulnerable populations in the world demonstrates an enormous commitment to safety and justice for all people.”

Gauderman is an associate professor of Latin American History. She has served as an expert witness in more than 300 Latin American asylum cases since 2010, focusing on gender-, sexuality-, and racial-based violence in Northern Triangle countries of Central America, Ecuador, and Peru.

“In the poem Home, Warsan Shire writes that ‘No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.’ As an expert witness, I hunt that shark,” Gauderman said. “My research into the cruelty and injustice that asylum-seekers have faced, and the testimony I provide to an often-skeptical immigration judge allow our courts to provide safety from the certain violence of their home countries.”

Having brought asylum experts, attorneys, and community leaders together during a national conference at UNM in 2019, Gauderman was awarded the Scholars & Society Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Mellon Foundation.

“The need to increase the number of expert witnesses and the value of a volume that would mobilize academics in this service was confirmed in the conference. During this conference I developed enduring relationships with participants, some of whom are contributors to the volume Practicing Asylum,” she said.

Seeking asylum is internationally recognized as a human right and has been protected under U.S. Law since 1980. For individuals fleeing persecution in their home countries, accessing and navigating the U.S. asylum system—which has long been a challenging process—is becoming increasingly difficult.

Gauderman says her lecture will draw on her work as an expert witness involving Latin American asylum seekers who are fleeing gender- and sexuality-based violence to offer reflections on root causes of migration, complexity of the asylum system, and role of scholarly expertise in asylum cases.

Gauderman joined UNM in 1998; she served as Departmental Undergraduate Advisor in the Department of History for nine years and as director of UNM Latin American Studies Program from 2005-2008. She teaches courses focusing on early and modern Latin American history. Reflective of her research interests and concern for social justice and human rights, she focuses on construction of institutional authority in early modern periods in Iberia and Latin America along with creation of racial categories, gender norms, sexual identities. Drawing on her community-engaged scholarship on U.S. asylum issues, she has developed courses supporting interdisciplinary work on immigration rights concerning women’s issues along with Indigenous peoples’, Afro-Latinos’, LGBTQ+ rights within contemporary Latin America.

Gauderman is also primary author/editor Practicing Asylum: A Handbook for Expert Witnesses in Latin American Gender- And Sexuality-Based Asylum Cases.

“Because growing restrictions on asylum make work by expert witnesses increasingly critical yet there are insufficient numbers assisting these cases,” she said.“Practicing Asylum provides historical framework conceptual tools templates adaptable ever-changing context U.S immigration law policy encouraging guiding other academics engaging witnessing including recognizing secondary trauma provoked caring themselves grueling service.”

The lecture will take place George Pearl Hall Thursday Sept 12 at 4:30 p.m.

The Annual Community-Engaged Scholarship Lecture Award recognizes exceptional scholarly work embodying UNM's commitment toward community engagement profoundly systematically affecting university-larger community relationship positively meaningfully way highest award bestowed University New Mexico nominee must active full Professor exceptional Associate Professor time nomination submitted scholarship creative work nominee highest quality tied faculty member's expertise