Deborah Canales joins Surviving Memory for a six-month placement focusing on Salvadoran women

Social Work master’s student Deborah Canales (York University) has begun a six-month placement with Surviving Memory in January 2026. Her work will focus on the violence inflicted on Salvadoran women during the Civil War (1980–1992) – a subject tied to her family’s history, who fled El Salvador during La Ofensiva [The Offensive], when guerrilla forces entered the capital, San Salvador, in 1989.

As the practical component of her degree, Canales will support interviews that document the lives of Salvadoran women who migrated to Canada: the violence they experienced, how displacement shaped their lives, and how they redefined their trajectories. Canales  will also analyze archives and related materials collected by Surviving Memory and York University. As she states: “I’m really interested in the violence these women experienced because of the Civil War, and the governments of El Salvador for decades, and how it is connected to the process of colonization and neoliberal politics.”.

Canales first connected with Surviving Memory during her undergraduate Sociology studies at King’s College, when she took project co-founder Amanda Grzyb’s field course in El Salvador in February 2025. She has followed the project’s work since then. Reflecting on this new step, she said “this placement is a great way to connect my studies with the history that affected my life and so many Salvadorans in the diaspora.”