David & Ana

David Burin - Argentina

I am a social communicator, and I have I have worked in this role in several projects and programs in the areas of rural development, food, local development, and communication. I have also participated in several grassroots initiatives related to these topics. In my youth I received training to work in Adult Education, and I specialized in understanding how to produce teaching and learning materials for several different adult audiences, i.e., audiences that have a very different relationship to literacy. I was able, over time, to combine the specific knowledge of social communication as a discipline, with the experience of working in projects and programs with several different people and for several different purposes (learning, participatory government in local development, food and small-scale agricultural processes, etc.). As a result, in my 40 years of experience in these fields, I have produced documentaries, video-clips, and other communication pieces such as manuals, booklets, and multimedia presentations.

I currently participate in the Instituto para la Inclusión Social y el Desarrollo Humano, where I have also been trained as an ethnographer using visual methodologies, and as a qualitative researcher. As a result of this work, I am the co-author of several articles, presentations and books. I also participate (in this same Institute) in the Publishing Committee, where I oversee the aesthetics for our different book collections, and I sometimes also participate as a visual designer.

Ana Inés Heras - Argentina

I am a Researcher at the National Research Council, Argentina, and I do my job both at the University and at the Instituto para la Inclusión Social y el Desarrollo Humano http://www.incluir.org.ar/

My topic of research is "How do people learn to self organize to access the rights they may be cut off from?" This being my general topic of research, is then contextualized in several different smaller studies, e.g., self organization in neighborhood struggles to access public green spaces; workers´ cooperatives and learning processes in collective self-management, etc.

I have obtained my highest degrees at the University of California, Campus Santa Barbara a long while ago... I was able to study there because I earned a Fulbright Scholarship (I got my Ph D and my MA in Language, Culture and Literacy at the School of Education with the guidance of Doctor Judith Green). My areas of expertise and training were interactional sociolinguistics and educational ethnography.

While in the USA I worked with teachers and students, and their families and communities, at elementary, middle school and high school.

I also played soccer at a city team called TANGO : ) and took some acrobatic classes at the University.

I came back to Argentina in 1998.

I am the mother of 5 daughters and sons. The first 3 daughters are now in their 30s and late 30s, and come from my husband's first marriage (he divorced but when we formed our family the 3 girls lived half the week w their mom and half the week w us : ), and the last 2 boys (now young adults) are from his second marriage with me. We also have 2 granddaughters and 1 grandson.

I take ballet and contemporary dance classes in my free time. I paint water colors and draw w pencils as well, as a hobby.