Join us for the presentation of the the results to date of FOUND and IdentIA, two initiatives addressing the crisis of disappeared persons in Mexico and Colombia, working at the intersection of technology, policy and the lived experience of searching families.

FOUND (Interpretar la Naturaleza para Encontrar a Quienes nos Faltan) combines remote sensing, geophysics, soil science and artificial intelligence with the territorial knowledge of searching families to support institutional search practices; identIA applies artificial intelligence to human identification and forensic investigations. Co-developed with searching families, both initiatives have grown into formal collaborations with national authorities, including training and embedding tools at Mexico's National Search Commission (CNB) and Colombia's Search Unit (UBPD). Together, they aim to become a global hub for innovation in search and human identification.

International support and partnerships have been indispensable to this trajectory, a dimension the session explores with Harriet Mathews, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and Mariela Garfias, British Embassy, Mexico City. The session closes with a reflection on memory, care and ethics in research with families of the disappeared, led by Professor Brad Evans, University of Bath, FOUND's ethics advisor.

Hosted by Ciaran Martin, Professor of Practice in the Management of Public Organisations, Blavatnik School of Government, speakers include:

• Harriet Thompson, Director for the Americas at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)
• Mariela Garfias, Head of Programmes, British Embassy in Mexico City
• Miguel Moctezuma, Co-Director of FOUND
• Ángel Serrano, Data and Technology Coordinator at LAB-CO; lead developer of identIA
• Brad Evans, FOUND’s Ethics Advisor; Professor of Political Violence, University of Bath