Schedule

Keynote Speaker

Dr. de Laforcade, Norfolk State University

Born in France, raised and educated between New England and Provence, Geoffroy de Laforcade studied at Tufts University, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, andthe University of Paris before earning his Ph.D. from Yale University. Prior to choosing an academic career, he worked in journalism, translation, and as collaborator of an international, Paris-based European network of scholars on nationality, racism and immigration. He has done extensive research on Argentina and Cuba, published on Bolivia, Haiti and other areas of the Southern Americas and the broader Atlantic/Mediterranean world.

He is currently a Professor of Latin American, Caribbean and World History at Norfolk State University where he serves as the Faculty Representative to the Board of Visitors, a Senior Fellow of the Robert C. Nusbaum Honors College, and was past Director of International Studies, Service-Learning and Civic Engagement. He designed and led over 20 study abroad courses in the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and China, taught international undergraduate and graduate seminars in Germany, Spain, Argentina and Cuba, organized numerous international colloquia and conferences, and presented over 90 conference papers, guest lectures and keynotes at over 50 colleges, universities, and professional associations on all continents.

Dr. de Laforcade has also taught adult Latinx learners in Spanish and led community workshops with diverse participants ranging from Mayan refugees in Mexico to Cape Verdean immigrants in Argentina and African-descended rights advocates in Cuba. He has co-edited several books, most recently "The Aliens Within: Danger, Disease and Dispacement in Representations of the Racialized Poor" (De Gruyter, 2022), "Migration, Diaspora, Exile: Narratives of Affiliation and Escape" (Lexington, 2020); and "In Defiance of Boundaries: Anarchism in Latin American History" (University of Florida Press, 2015), which received the Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award in 2017. He is currently working on several monographs: "Demiurges of the Immigrant Dream: La Boca del Riachuelo, an Insurgent 'Piccola Italia' in Argentina"; "A Radical Misadventure: Antiracism, Republicanism, and Revolution in France and Cuba"; and "Eluding States: Fugitivity, Sovereignty, Resistance"; as well as a research project, for which he was twice awarded a Georg Bollenbeck Research Fellowship at the University of Siegen in Germany (2021 and 2022), on "Race, Nation and Historical Memory through the Prism of Graphic Art: Blackness and Civic Agency in the Cuban Comic Tradition from the Republic to the Revolution."

Guest Speaker

Iryna Z, President & Newzaira K., Vice President

Iryna Z. is the President of the Graduate Society of International Studies. She is a PhD Candidate in the International Studies program majoring in conflict and cooperation as well as American Foreign Policy. Newzaira K. is the Vice President of the Graduate Society of International Studies. She is a PhD Candidate in the International Studies program and Graduate Certificate Candidate for Women's Studies and International Development. She serves the Hampton Roads community as a clinical social worker, but also expresses interest in bringing international studies into the realm of social work.