Overview

Dr Arely Cruz-Santiago is a Leverhulme Trust Fellow. Her project 'Forensic Citizenship: Science and Expertise in Latin America' analyses the historical development of alternative forensic grassroots practices that have emerged in Argentina and Colombia. By combining qualitative empirical research, along with archival and documentary examination, Forensic Citizenship will be the first international comparative research of its kind. Dr Cruz-Santiago's research has been opening up a new agenda on citizen forensics (2016, 2017, 2020) that analyses emerging forms of citizenship built around Forensic Science and DNA. For the last ten years, Arely has examined grass-roots forensic practices such as the collection of DNA data, the analysis of victims’ records, the use of  GPS, CCTV images and drones to aid in the location and identification of disappeared persons. Her doctoral research investigated how lay citizens in Mexico transform themselves into self-made forensic experts. It created an impact-led theoretical avenue in the sociology of forensic science that moves beyond the expertise confined to laboratories and courtrooms into participatory research that challenges existing models of forensic investigation. In 2019-2021 she was Co-Investigator on the ESRC transformative research project ‘Data Justice in Mexico’s Multiveillant Society’ which explored new ways to engage with big data and modes of governance to tackle the inherent asymmetries of digital practices. Prior to this position, she held an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Geography Department at Durham University, where she  completed her PhD in 2017. Her fellowship Forensic Citizens: The Politics of Searching for Disappeared Persons analysed citizen-led forms of forensic governance in contexts of protracted conflict (e.g. Colombia and Mexico).  From 2014-2016, while pursuing her PhD, Arely was the Co-Investigator in the ESRC-funded project ‘Citizen Led Forensics: DNA & data-banking as technologies of disruption-a novel way to learn and intervene in the search for the disappeared in Mexico’. This project set the basis for a participatory research strategy to jointly create and design, with families of disappeared persons, two citizen-led forensic technologies: A data registry of disappearances; and the first DNA database created for, and by, relatives of the disappeared.  Dr Cruz-Santiago’s research has informed this research agenda since 2011, when she received seed funds to launch a feasibility study to create a  ‘Citizen-led DNA Database’ via funds awarded by Singularity University (Palo Alto, California). Dr Cruz-Santiago has been advisor to the IOM (Missing Migrants Project), is member of ICRC's Missing Persons Project global community of practice and member of  the panel of experts at the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP).

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