Tibisay is a PhD candidate in the History Department. She was born and raised in the city of Barcelona, Spain, and obtained her BA in History from the University of Barcelona (UB). During her bachelor’s degree she had the opportunity to spend a semester abroad in Mannheim, Germany, where after noticing how differently modern history was taught in Germany as opposed to Spain, she started to become interested in the ways in which past events of mass violence are remembered and taught in different countries. 

Tibisay moved to the United States in 2017, and after completing a MA degree in Anthropology and Archaeology from Rutgers University (New Jersey), she moved to Minnesota where she is now pursuing a PhD in History with a minor in Heritage Studies and Public History. 

Tibisay’s research interests focus on the emergence and development of politics of historical memory after events of mass violence, genocide, and violations of human rights. Her dissertation explores specifically the politics of historical memory around state-managed boarding schools for orphans and children of political prisoners during the Spanish Civil War and the Francoist dictatorship. The generalized abuse that took place in some of these boarding schools is not well-known by most Spaniards, and she is interested in analyzing the different avenues of transmission of historical memory that the victims have had to communicate their experiences. 

In the Spring semester of 2022, she is working as an RA for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and collaborating with the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, while she prepares to conduct a year of archival research in Spain during the fall and spring semesters of 2022-2023.