The Gabinete de Comunicación y Educación (UAB) inaugurates the Planeta UAB Cycle of conferences, a meeting of digital conversations with different experts aimed at students of the Master’s in Travel Journalism, the Master’s in Environmental Communication, the Master’s in Communication and Education and the Master’s in Management of Political and Electoral Communication. The first session, entitled ‘Story seekers. Jungles, jaguars and volcanoes‘, was given by writers Sabrina Duque, Joseph Zárate and Santiago Wills.
This cycle of digital conferences is part of the project “Planet UAB: The journey to the other – equals in differences” organised by the Gabinete during the academic year 2020-2021, with the support of the Solidarity Fund of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, which organised a series of activities and awareness-raising actions based on the concept of the UAB campus as a “planet” and which dealt with major issues such as the culture of peace, sustainability, the environment and interculturality, among others.
According to Santiago Tejedor, director of the Gabinete de Comunicación y Educación (UAB), these meetings will “allow us to talk about the adventure of exploration, discovery and learning that means learning, research and training“. They will address issues related to culture, otherness, health education, the environment, information technologies and interculturality, among others.
This cycle was inaugurated with a talk entitled ‘Story seekers. Jungles, jaguars and volcanoes‘. The writers Sabrina Duque, Joseph Zárate and Santiago Wills explained their different journalistic projects focused on social and natural themes and debated the different characteristics that make up the journalistic chronicle. All of them analysed how narrative, literary journalism can be carried out, far from immediacy. Empathy, observation, the search for details, documentation, the search for sources and creativity were some of the topics discussed.
Sabrina Duque is a 2019 Michael Jacobs Travel Writing Fellow for her project Nicaragua: villages, lava and ashes. She is an Ecuadorian journalist, chronicler and translator. Throughout her career she has published for various publishers and newspapers in Portugal, Brazil, Italy, the United States, Ecuador and Uruguay.
Joseph Zárate is a journalist and editor. He was deputy editor of the magazines Etiqueta Negra and Etiqueta Verde. In 2016 he received the Ortega y Gasset Award for Best Story or Investigative Journalism and in 2018 the Gabriel García Márquez Award, in the Text category. Author of ‘Guerras del interior’.
Santiago Wills is a journalist. He studied Philosophy at the National University of Colombia and holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University in New York. Winner of the Michael Jacobs Travel Writing Fellowship in 2021, for his project entitled “The Shadow of the Jaguar: Capturing the Spirit of America”.
