Social & Cultural Change

Brokered by Dr. Marina Amat, founder and president of AMATEA. She completed her PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from American University, Washington, D.C., in 2005. She focused much of her research on people who have experienced the trauma of social and cultural displacement and the life story narratives they produce.  For dissertation research, she worked in the refugee industry in the post–9/11 Washington Metropolitan Area, identifying “refugee scripts” and “refugee narratives” as vital sites to investigating the meanings behind the refugee concept as conceived among self-identified refugees. She has presented her research domestically and internationally.

Dr. Amat is trained in critical theory, Spanish literature, and creative writing, and earned her MA (with Distinction) and double-major BA (Phi Beta Kappa) from Trinity College, Hartford, CT.  Specializing in qualitative research methods and in-depth interviews, her core competencies center around narrative research, analysis, and interpretation. Her current academic research considers both (oral and text) stories and narratives of the “lived experience” where cultures intersect.

Dr. Amat is the former principal of a 10-year-old information technology company. She combines interdisciplinary academic training as a linguist, writer, and social scientist with nearly 20 years of professional experience in the areas of corporate communications and information technology for large, for-profit, not-for-profit, and start-up companies. She combines specialized competencies with societal concerns for the empowerment of local and global communities.