Carlos Hagerman and Jorge Villalobos are Mexican filmmakers known for their award-winning film Home is Somewhere Else (2023), a documentary animation that shares the rich complexity of the emotional experiences of immigrant children and families to better understand and empathize with them.

Carlos Hagerman was born in Mexico City. He received his MFA in Film at NYU as a Fulbright scholar. He worked for eight years as a director in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s production company Zeta Films, before opening his own company. There, he produced and directed award-winning documentaries like Those Who Remain (IDA Humanitas Award 2009), Back to Life, and No Place Like Home. He also co-produced Plaza de la Soledad (Sundance 2013) and Rush Hour (SXSW 2018). He is a founding partner of Brinca Animation Studio.

Jorge Villalobos is a writer, director, and producer of animated and live-action projects. He directed several children’s series for Canal Once, Mexico’s Public TV channel. His animated and fiction short films won over 20 international awards. Since co-founding Brinca Animation Studio in 2012, Jorge and Carlos Hagerman have worked as a team, co-producing and co-directing animation projects for children and communication tools for human rights organizations like UNICEF and the Mexican Human Rights Commission.

Dr. Erin Hogan is Professor of Spanish at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). Dr. Hogan’s broader areas of research range from 17th century Spain to contemporary Latin America, and span the transnational screen arts, intercultural pedagogy, and videographic criticism. Her research particularly examines the child and the patriarchal corpse as biopolitical figures, gynocentric filmic representations of and by women, and the uses of comedy and satire for social justice. Dr. Hogan is the author of The Two cines con niño: Genre and the Child Protagonist in Over Fifty Years of Spanish Film (1955-2010) (Edinburgh University Press, 2018) and Patriarchy’s Remains: An Autopsy of Iberian Cinematic Dark Humour (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024), and has taught courses including “Film and Society in Latin America” and “Political Childhood and Children’s Political Citizenship in Western Culture”.

Julie Kline worked in the UW-Milwaukee Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies for 38 years until her retirement in 2024. She holds a BA from the Ohio State University (International Relations) and an MA from UW-Madison (Ibero-American Studies). A long-standing interest in international children’s literature was shaped by a 1988 fellowship at the International Youth Library, Munich. That experience helped lay the groundwork for creation of the Américas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature, with the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP), and coordination of the award for its first 18 years, including an annual award presentation at the Library of Congress. While with UWM CLACS, Kline also taught a children’s literature course online with the UWM School of Education, focused on Latin American/Latinx cultural heritages, and co-organized multiple related public events, including the 2021 series “Latin American Children’s Book Creators.”

María Morfín Stoopen is founder and Director of La Jugarreta Espacios de Participación AC, an organization in Tepoztlán, Morelos, México, that since 2000 supports children in proposing and directing collective projects for the good of the community based on their own interests. Morfín has a degree in Social Communication from Mexico’s Autonomous Metropolitan University and has consulted for multiple institutions on the implementation of programs promoting child and youth participation (including UNICEF, National System for the Integral Development of the Family, Ministry of Culture, National Electoral Institute). In addition to offering extensive trainings for educators and parents, she is the author of various books, guides, and articles on child and youth participation, such as Child and Youth Participation: A Guide for its Promotion (2012).

Dr. Jessica Taft is Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz and the Faculty Director of the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas. Her research focuses on young people’s contributions to social change through activism and social movements in North and South America. She is the author of Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas (NYU Press, 2011), The Kids Are in Charge: Activism and Power in Peru’s Movement of Working Children (NYU Press, 2019), and numerous journal articles on girls’ activism, children’s participation, youth politics, and intergenerational dynamics within social movements. Dr. Taft is part of a variety of local, national, and international collaborative projects focused on child and youth participation and has worked with funders and non-governmental organizations to deepen their analysis of the challenges and possibilities of meaningful engagement with young people.

Misha Vallejo Prut is an Ecuadorian audiovisual artist and storyteller whose work blurs the line between documentary and art. His projects explore glocal issues: themes that appear local but reveal global dimensions through his lens. With an MA in Documentary Photography from the University of the Arts London, Misha is the author of three internationally award-winning photobooks as well as the interactive documentary secretsarayaku.net. His photography has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, VICE, GEO, Stern, and Marie Claire, among others, and his exhibitions have also traveled globally. Misha is currently based in Ecuador, where he continues to develop new audiovisual projects.

Dr. Gabriel Velez is Associate Professor in Educational Policy and Leadership in the College of Education at Marquette University. Dr. Velez studies identity development in adolescents, particularly in relation to citizenship, human rights, restorative justice, and peace. Dr. Velez has a forthcoming book entitled Making Meaning of Justice and Peace: A Developmental Lens to Restorative Justice and Peace Education, and is working on another manuscript on adolescent development, education, and artificial intelligence, both with Cambridge University Press. He was a secondary educator in Peru and Colombia for 5 years and has worked with a number of Colombian universities as a Fulbright Specialist.