Luis Carlos Sotelo Castro

Luis Carlos Sotelo-Castro was Concordia’s Canada Research Chair in Oral History Performance (OHP) between 2016 and 2021. He is Associate Professor in the Theatre Department, and a core member of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS). A Canada Foundation for Innovation Infrastructure Grant enabled him to create the Acts of Listening Lab (ALLab) in 2018. Based at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, the ALLab is a world-leading hub set up to investigate the transformative power of listening to first-person narratives by people impacted by social trauma. With state-of-the art technology and a performance space, the ALLab brings together sound art, performance, oral history, and social innovation methodologies to support conversations (or rather, listening processes) that matter.

In his research and teaching, performance creation, social drama, oral history, community-building, memory studies, trauma studies, political philosophy, and audience participation combine to engage publics as active listeners of difficult but crucialknowledge.

He is originally from Colombia, and in collaboration with singer Pilar Jimenez, he founded in 2019 the Listening Choir, a community choir that creates acoustic spaces to support collective acts of memory for Colombians in exile and their circles of support.