Project Narrative
Palmar Álvarez-Blanco
Project Director
Palmar Álvarez-Blanco is a professor at Carleton College, Minnesota. She earned her PhD in Spanish Cultural Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder and joined the faculty of the Spanish department at Carleton in 2006. She is the co-founder and President of the international association ALCESXXI, a space dedicated to critical and public intervention in research, educational, and cultural areas threatened by capitalist interference. She is currently serving as the Broom Fellow for Public Scholarship (2022-2025), the “Media Library for Public Scholarship” is her way to contributing to Carleton’s academic community and to the field of Public Scholarship.
As a cultural researcher, Palmar Álvarez-Blanco focuses on tracing the historical issues and crises inherent to the capitalist system, producing situated analyses of contemporary initiatives that often function interstitially, as well as documenting the potential transition towards a system based on the logic of the Commons. This work is captured in the cartography, public research project and living archive of The Constellation of the Commons.
In addition to numerous articles on culture and politics in academic and non-academic journals, her books include: Pequeño Tratado de amistad. Hacia una política de respeto (La Vorágine, 2023), En ruta con el común. Archivo y memoria de una posible constelación” (2017-18-19), La Imaginación Hipotecada. Aportaciones al debate sobre la precariedad en el presente (Ecologistas en Acción, 2016), and Contornos de la narrativa española actual (2000-2010). Un diálogo entre creadores y críticos (Iberoamericana, 2011).
Dann Hurlbert
Co-principal investigator
Dann Hurlbert is Carleton College’s Media & Design Specialist, and he works to help faculty create “Perfect” Instructional Videos and associated assessments. Dann also supervises 30 PEPS students and manages Carleton’s campus Event Video Production. Prior to Carleton, Dann spent 15 years teaching video production and theatre and worked as a professional actor and director — appearing in 50+ television commercials and nearly that many stage productions. Through his MFA, Dann produced the educational documentary How to Write and Produce Your Own High School Musical, which is currently being distributed through Films Media Group. He also invented and brought to market The Little Prompter, a personal teleprompter for instructors, which has since taken on a life of its own through another video supplier. His most recent creative endeavor involved writing and publishing a YA and Christian Fiction novel, Suddenly Rural Girl, with his teenage daughter. Dann has a certificate in online teaching through UW Stout and has loads of experience on stage, on the screen, and as both a face-to-face and online instructor. He gladly continues that work at Carleton and beyond.
Ahtziry Tinajero
Research Assistant
Ahtziry Tinajero ‘24 is a Spanish major and Educational Studies minor interested in digital ethnography, collaborative research, and bilingual education. They are passionate about finding ways of being civically engaged and forming long-lasting relationships with community members, as well as learning new digital and cross-cultural skills.
Ahtziry is always looking for opportunities to grow as a researcher, educator, and community member given their involvement in collaborative projects like the Carleton-Faribault Participatory Action Research Collaboration and Project Friendship. They are hoping to pursue a career in research and education, and want to conduct their own research on gentrification alongside community members in their hometown of Dallas.
Sinda Nichols
Director of the CCCE
Sinda Nichols ’05 began serving as Director of Carleton’s Center for Community and Civic Engagement (CCCE) in 2020.
Before returning to Carleton, she was the Director of Member Engagement and Minnesota Operations for Iowa & Minnesota Campus Compact where she supported 38 higher education institutions in living out their distinctive public purposes. She is a collaborative and facilitative leader with a commitment to fostering civic agency and healthy communities that work for all people. Trained and licensed as a social worker, she turned her focus to higher education’s role in realizing our democracy when she became the project manager for the Speak Up! Speak Out! youth action civics initiative at Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life at The University of Texas at Austin.
Sinda holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Carleton College, is an alumna of HECUA, and has a master’s degree in social work from The University of Texas at Austin.
Emily Seru
Associate Director of the CCCE
Emily Seru began serving as the Associate Director for Academic Civic Engagement and Scholarship in Carleton’s Center for Community and Civic Engagement (CCCE) in 2021.
Before coming to Carleton Emily worked in academic civic engagement at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, where she advised faculty on academic civic engagement course design and community partnerships. Before joining on-campus civic engagement work, Emily served with the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA) for over a decade where she led a number of academic-community engagement initiatives including credit-bearing internships for Twin Cities HECUA off-campus semester-long programs, a summer community-engaged college internship program that spanned Minnesota, North Dakota, and Wisconsin, a philanthropy fellowship for BIPOC graduate students, and a four-year intensive Central Corridor Internship program that embedded undergraduate students in neighborhood and housing development nonprofits along St. Paul’s central corridor during the LRT construction.
Emily holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Lewis and Clark College and a master’s degree in experiential education from Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Emmanuel Gimeno
Logo Designer and Multimedia Specialist
Emmanuel Gimeno Lodosa is a designer and editor at Creando Estudio Gráfico in Spain. He is an expert in the fields of editorial, interactive, expository, and corporate design, in addition to the field of information and communication technology.
Doug Bratland
Web Designer and Web Content Strategist
Doug Bratland joined the Carleton web team in 2007. Before that, he spent 15 years developing e-learning programs for numerous giant American corporations, working as a technical writer, illustrator, animator, multimedia developer, interface designer, instructional designer, and project manager.
Doug has served Carleton in a variety of web content and strategy roles, and became the College’s web designer in 2021. He has a B.A. in Studio Art and Psychology from St. Olaf College.