Jenny Escobar

Jenny Escobar serves as Core Faculty in the M.A./Ph.D. Program in Depth Psychology with Specialization in Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Eco-Psychologies (CLIE) at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Holding a B.A. in Forensic Psychology and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology with emphasis in Latin American/Latina(o) Studies, her academic journey bridges personal experience as a Colombian immigrant with transformative justice scholarship.

Her research centers on survivors of state violence who convert trauma into healing through memory practices and spiritual solidarity. Key interests include decolonizing psychological frameworks, examining how Indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and campesino communities relate to land for healing, and disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline through restorative justice. She emphasizes liberation psychology's focus on traumatogenic structures rather than individual pathology, arguing that healing emerges through collective action and justice demands.

Dr. Escobar teaches Participatory Research, Psychologies of Liberation, Restorative Justice, and Foundations for Research. Her work explores how connection with land, ancestors, and nonhuman worlds expands imaginative capacity beyond oppressive systems. Current projects include a book titled Love as Remembrance: State Violence and the Movement for Memory in Columbia (Oxford University Press proposal), analyzing how memory practices fuel justice movements amid state violence.

As a transformative justice practitioner, she facilitates spaces where survivors' strength and demands for justice coalesce. Her approach prioritizes reciprocal relationships and community accountability, rejecting psychology's historical role in upholding oppression. She connects Colombian state violence with U.S. systemic issues like gentrification, highlighting shared experiences of dehumanization and the necessity of spiritual solidarity for collective resilience.