Gabriella Soto

SCHOLARLY CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND WORKSHOPS (* indicates invited)

Forthcoming, November 2024. “Materializing the Missing: Search and Recovery for Long-Term Missing Migrants in the US Southwest Borderlands” paper for Unearthing, Unseeing: Archaeology, Heritage, and Forensics in the Shadow of State Violence organized by Cornell University Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies. (Ithaca, New York)

*2023 “Migration, Borders and Human Rights: Transnational Strategies from Civil Society to Save Lives and Locate Missing Migrants” Workshop organized by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. (Mexico City, Mexico)

*2023 “Materializing Ambiguous Loss: Heritage, Memory, and Uncertainty in an Occupied Border Zone” invited paper and panel discussion in Death, Remembrance, and Cemeteries in the US West at the Western History Association Annual Conference. (Los Angeles, California)

*2023 “Migrant Deaths Along the US-Mexico Border” Workshop organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Binational Migration Institute. (Tucson, Arizona)

November 2022 “The Spirit of Human Rights: Practices of Remembrance in the Arizona Sonora Borderlands” submission for the annual meeting of the Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. (Hybrid conference at Kitchener Waterloo, Canada)

*(Conference cancelled) “Picking up the pieces: Salvage politics in response to border security” invited submission for Disrupting Narratives of Risk and Rescue in Migration at the annual meeting for the Society for Applied Anthropology. (Albuquerque, New Mexico)

*2019 “Communities of care and grief: Research and activism for postmortem care of undocumented migrants on the US-Mexico border” invited submission for Experts as Activists, Activists as Experts panel, at the annual meeting for the American Anthropological Association. First author with A. Ochoa O’Leary and R. Rubio-Goldsmith. (Vancouver, Canada)

*2019 Panel Discussant for Methodologies for the Study of Migration in Contexts of Violence, at the annual meeting for the Latin American Studies Association. (Boston, Massachusetts)

*2019 “Uneven efforts to identify and enumerate migrant deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border” invited submission for Methodologies for the Study of Migration in Contexts of Violence panel, at the annual meeting for the Latin American Studies Association. Second author with A. Ochoa O’Leary. (Boston, Massachusetts)

*2019 “Migration Materiality and New Heritage in Southern Arizona” for Migration Materialities mini-conference at Trinity College. (Hartford, Connecticut)

*2019 “Migration materialities” mini-conference at Trinity College. Co-organizer with Timothy Landry and Jane Nadel-Klein; Event co-sponsored by the Graduate Program and the Department of Anthropology at Trinity College. (Hartford, Connecticut)

*2019 “Migration, Materiality, Survivance” invited submission for Chicanx Archaeology, at the annual meeting for the Society for American Archaeology (Albuquerque, New Mexico)

*2018   “Uneven efforts to identify and enumerate migrant deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border” invited submission for Border Deaths and Migration Policies: State and Non-State Approaches, hosted by the International Organization for Migration, Médecins San Frontières and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions. Second author with A. Ochoa O’Leary. (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

*2018 “The Border Enforcement ‘Funnel Effect’: A material culture approach to border security on the U.S.-Mexico border, 2000-2016. The McDonald Institute of Archaeology, Cambridge University. (Cambridge, United Kingdom).

*2017 "Local Laws/Foreign Bodies: Postmortem care for undocumented migrants in the United States" invited submission in Law and the Public-Private Dichotomy: Rights, at the annual International Meeting on Law and Society. Second author with R. Rubio-Goldsmith. (Mexico City, Mexico). 

2017  “Microhistories of the ‘Funnel Effect’: Tracing the banal materialities of U.S. border enforcement, 2000-present” at the annual meeting for the Society of American Archaeology (Vancouver, Canada).

*2016 “The Lives of Others: On Traces Left Behind in the Arizona Borderlands, 2007-present.” Invited paper and panel discussion in The dialectics of power and points of escape: refugees, undocumented migrants, and survivors at the American Anthropological Association Annual Conference (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

2016  “The dialectics of power and points of escape: refugees, undocumented migrants, and survivors” panel and discussion session at the American Anthropological Association Annual Conference. Co-organizer with Abby Wheatley (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

2016  “Enunciative Walking: Illegality, Prevention through Deterrence, and the Arizona-Mexico Border, Results from Phase 1” at the Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Conference (Vancouver, Canada)

2016  “Problematizing Resistance: A Multidisciplinary Workshop on Informal Political Action and Scholarly Praxis.” Workshop and panel discussion in Resistance: Borders and Power, Social Justice and Community at the 44th Annual Conference of the National Association for Ethnic Studies. Co-organizer with Sophie Alves, Jesus-Jaime Díaz, and Sofia Gomez (Tucson, Arizona)

*2015 *“Socioeconomics and Death Investigation on the U.S.-Mexico Border: The implications of social vulnerabilities for identification of undocumented border crosser remains” invited paper presentation and panel discussion in The Geographies of Civic Engagement: Mapping Community Organization and Collaboration in Efforts to Identify and Enumerate the Dead Along the U.S.-Mexico Border at the annual meeting of Rocky Mountain Association of Latin American Scholars (Tucson, Arizona)

*2013 “When Death Comes Knocking: The role of geography and civic engagement in efforts to identify and enumerate the dead along the U.S.-Mexico border” Invited paper presentation and panel discussion at the annual meeting of the Latin American Studies Assocation Second author with A. Ochoa O’Leary (Washington, DC)

*2013 “Contested Space: Materiality of an undocumented journey” invited paper and panel discussion in “Aqui Estamos…”: Interdisciplinary perspectives on transborder places and transnational spaces as sites of resistance at the annual meeting of the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Scholars (San Antonio, Texas)

2012  “Archaeology in Clandestine Spaces: A case study at the U.S.-Mexico Border” paper presentation at the annual meeting of the Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory Group (York, United Kingdom)

*2012 “When Death Comes Knocking: The Role of Geography and Civic Engagement in Efforts to Identify and Enumerate the Dead Along the U.S.-Mexico Border” Paper presentation and panel discussion at the Conferencia Binacional de Globalización y Inmigración. Second-author with A. Ochoa-O’Leary. (Mexicali, Mexico)

2012  “Crossing the Line: Considering undocumented migration as collective action” paper presentation and panel discussion in The Archaeology of Contemporary Protest Movements at the annual meeting of the Theoretical Archaeology Group – USA (Buffalo, New York)

*2012 “What’s Left: An Archaeology of Undocumented Migration at the U.S.-Mexico Border” invited paper presentation in Putting People in Places: Negotiating Tenuous Relations in Space at the annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology (Baltimore, Maryland)

2012  “Practical Politics on the Migration Trail” paper presentation in the General Session: Below the Surface and Beyond the Stereotype at the annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology (Baltimore, Maryland)

2011  “The Undocumented Landscape: Transience and Subsistence on the Border” paper presentation and panel discussion in Archaeologies of the Post-Industrial at the annual meeting of the Theoretical Archaeology Group—USA (Berkeley, California)

2011  “The Undocumented Landscape: Transience and Subsistence on the Border” paper presentation in Historical Ecology and Anthropogenic Change in the Americas at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (Sacramento, California)

*2009 “Architectural Styles and Designs as Indicators of Community at the site of PVN647, Northwest Honduras” paper presentation and panel discussion in Communities Across Space and Through Time: Investigations into Southeast Mesoamerica at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (Atlanta, Georgia)

PUBLIC LECTURES

2023 “To go missing in Brooks County: In search and in doubt of best practices to care for the dead.” Department lecture in the School of Transborder Studies, Arizona State University. (Tempe, Arizona)

2023 “Forensic investigation as humanitarian care: Migrant fatalities in southeast Texas.” Public lecture for the annual 2023 Drescher Lecture for Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University. (Tempe, Arizona)

2023 “The Anthropology of Death Certificates: Haunted Archives at the US-Mexico Border” Public lecture at University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology’s Monday Seminar. (Chicago, Illinois)

2022 Faculty panel for TRIO Student Support Services at the Arizona State University Polytechnic Campus (Mesa, Arizona)

2022 Moderator and panelist for expert panel of virtual film screening, Missing in Brooks County, Sponsored by Project Humanities at Arizona State University and PBS' Independent Lens. (Tempe, Arizona)

2021 “Humanitarian Forensis: Collaborative Care in the Context of Border Crossing Deaths in South Texas” Public lecture at Arizona State University, Barrett Honors College’s “Scholars Series for Hispanic History Month.” (Mesa, Arizona)

2021 “Counting the dead as activism: The border and beyond” Invited public paper and discussion for the panel, “Death and Disappearance in the Borderlands: Recent Research in Undocumented Border Crosser Deaths in Southern Arizona” at the Binational Migration Institute, University of Arizona. (Tucson, Arizona)

2020 “Towards an anthropology of body counts” Public lecture at Arizona State University, Barrett Honors College’s “Scholars Series for Hispanic History Month.” (Mesa, Arizona)

2019  “Mapping the unmappable: A social archaeology of border enforcement through attrition in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands” Public lecture at Brown University, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology. (Providence, Rhode Island)

2016  “Best Practices for the Standardization of Examination and Identification of UBC Remains Along the U.S.-Mexico Border.” Invited paper for panel discussion, "Life, Death, and Mass Incarceration at the Border" sponsored by the Binational Migration Institute and Coalicíon de Derechos Humanos (Tucson, Arizona)

2014  “Archaeology and Activism at the U.S.-Mexico Border: The role of archaeological mapping and survey to facilitate migrant search and rescue” invited for the Migration Research Dialogues lecture series, sponsored by the Binational Migration Institute (Tucson, Arizona)