Amanda Grzyb's primary teaching and research interests include documentation of state violence, comparative genocide studies, memory studies, oral history, media and the public interest, social movements, memorials and commemoration processes, and social justice. She was appointed to the Order of Ontario in 2025. 

Dr. Grzyb currently serves as the project director / PI for Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador, a collaborative research partnership funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) $2.5M Partnership Grant (2021-2028), the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Ontario Research Fund (ORF), and 22 cross-sector partners. Under the auspices of Surviving Memory, she leads the massacre mapping team, which employs GPS, LiDAR, photogrammetry, and videography technologies to document massacre sites and destroyed villages in collaboration with survivors of the Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992). Her publications and community-based research, research-creation projects, and human rights reports focus on El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Liberia, Rwanda, Sudan, and Nazi-occupied Europe. Since receiving tenure at Western University in 2013, Dr. Grzyb has increasingly oriented her research toward collaborative and public-facing memory projects with survivors of state violence, participatory methodologies, and community partnerships that combine scholarly research with public and accessible knowledge sharing outcomes. These projects include massacre mapping, architectural co-design of memorials, video testimonies, a music archive, oral histories, memory workshops, digitization and preservation of vulnerable materials, public exhibitions, community murals, community-based capacity-building and training, human rights investigations, and community history books.

As Rogers Chair of Studies in Journalism and New Information Technology (2025-2027), Dr. Grzyb is organizing a speaker and seminar series around the theme of Media and the New Fascism, which focuses on the global rise of authoritarianism, white supremacy, right-wing populism, and ultranationalism – as well as organized resistance to these movements –  through the lenses of journalism, big tech, social media, and information studies. The series brings together scholars, journalists, information professionals, and social movement leaders to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and public engagement about one of the most critical topics of our time.

Dr. Grzyb is an affiliate professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism, and the Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction. She completed her Ph.D. in English at Duke University in 2007, where her scholarly training focused on American and African-American Literature, Theory and Criticism, and Holocaust Studies. She wrote her dissertation on literary and cultural representations of American homelessness under the supervision of Professor Houston A. Baker, Jr., a leading scholar in African-American studies. Her doctoral studies were supported by a 4-year Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and a 1-year American Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW). She also completed an M.A. in English at Duke University, an M.A. in Theory and Criticism at Western University, and a B.A. in Combined Honours English and Philosophy at Western University.

Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador: An International Research Partnership (2017-2028)
Dr. Grzyb is currently serving as the project director for Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador, an international, interdisciplinary, cross-sector research partnership. Founded in 2017, Surviving Memory currently has more than 100 active team members -- including survivors, scholars, students, artists, local youth, and practitioners -- who are committed to documenting the history of the Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992) and preventing future violence. This research project is funded, in part, by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and the Ontario Research Fund (ORF). After two successive SSHRC grants for pilot initiatives, the Surviving Memory team was awarded a SSHRC Partnership Grant in 2021, which provides $2.5M in research funding over 7 years from 2021 to 2028. This grant is matched by more than $3M in additional cash and in-kind contributions from project partners and donors in El Salvador, Canada, and Europe. 

Commemorating the Experiences of Liberian Women Survivors of Conflict Related Sexual Violence for Collective Healing (2024-2027)
Dr. Grzyb is a co-applicant on a SSHRC-funded partnership project focused on the documentation and commemoration of women's experiences during the Liberian Civil War. Led by Dr. Erica Lawson (project director and Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at Western University) and supported by a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, this community-university collaboration addresses the ongoing erasure of the experiences of survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) from public memory in Liberia twenty years after the end of the country's civil war. Working in two counties (Lofa and Margibi) with the highest rates of survivors of CRSV, the project engages a cross-section of Liberian society to explore arts-based activities, events, and publication outputs designed to remember the war, centre the experience of survivors, and foster collective healing. The research team is comprised of three central partners: ActionAidLiberia, whose mandate includes an intersectional feminist approach to tackling sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV); Cuttington University (Liberia), School of Global Affairs and Policy, and its Institute for Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies; and an interdisciplinary group of scholars from Western University. Dr. Grzyb works closely with the Liberian massacre mapping team and consults on community-based methodologies across the project team. 

Participatory Agroecological Research for Transforming Knowledge and Equity in African Communities - PARTAKE Africa (2025-2032)
Dr. Grzyb is a co-applicant on this is an innovative SSHRC-funded partnership initiative, which builds on decades of collaboration on participatory agroecological research in Africa. Led by Dr. Isaac Luginaah (project director and Distinguished University Professor of Geography at Western University), this collaborative research aims to test the extent to which agroecological practices and participatory knowledge mobilization enhances African communities’ resilience against climate change in Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia. The team intends to improve food security, health and wellbeing, reduce post-harvest food loss, enhance environmental sustainability and achieve gender, intergenerational, and socio-economic equities. Funded by a $2.5M SSHRC Partnership Grant, this project uses Agroecological GENder Transformative (AGENT), climate responsive and research-intensive living labs (AGENT labs) with participatory, intersectional feminist and decolonial methodologies across the Global South and North. The approach facilitates cross-pollination of knowledge exchange and practices among farmer researchers, scientific researchers, practitioners, community experts, and policymakers.

Justice Visions - Ghent University: International Advisory Board (2025 - present)
Funded by an European Research Council (ERC) grant, the Justice Visions team explores research on topics related to the role of victim-survivors as protagonists in a wide range of justice struggles in the broad realm of transitional justice. This includes "textbook" transitional justice contexts like Guatemala or Chile, but also contexts where the language and tools of transitional justice are mobilized in struggles over redress for colonial harm, contexts of ongoing conflict, and so-called entrenched transitions. Dr. Grzyb joined the International Advisory Board in 2025.