Americas Plural
October 2011
Inside this issue... Pg 2-3 Director’s Letter Pg 4-6 Staff Highlights Pg 7 Library Pg 8-9 Visiting Fellows Pg 10-11 PhD Student News Pg 12-13 MA Fieldwork Grants Pg 14-15 Programme Reports Pg 14 Publications Pg 14 ISA Fellowships Pg 15-16 Key Welcome to the relaunched Americas Plural, the biannual newsletter Projects for the Institute of the Study of the Americas. ISA occupies a unique position at the core of academic study of the region in the UK. We Pg 17-19 Special hope that this newsletter will celebrate the work of our academics Events and students, highlight the successes of our alumni and share the key projects the Institute is currently working on. We hope you Pg 20 Alumni will enjoy our new design and would welcome any comments, suggestions or news stories for future editions to Americas@sas.ac.uk 21 Giving to ISA Sunset in Laguna Chacahua by Pierre Moorsom
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Director’s Letter Greetings All, It gives me great pleasure to see Americas Plural re launched as part of our new website development. I join my colleagues in hoping that it will foster greater ties among our large ISA diaspora consisting of our former students, Fellows, colleagues and collaborators, many of whom have kept in touch with us over the years.
projects that will help to develop our on-line digital resources. Dr. Matthew Hill is working on two projects: Women and US Foreign Policy, an oral history project, and Reporting America in the Age of Global War. Dr. Deborah Toner began work on ‘Liberalism in the Americas’, which, in association with the British Library will develop an online digital resource and discussion As many of you know, in recognition of its leading site, and organise a series of scholarly symposia and role in the study of the Americas, ISA is privileged to conferences over the coming year. We also welcomed receive government funding to support national and Dr. Amy Hinterberger as a Post Doctoral Fellow, funded international cross disciplinary research. We have by the Canadian Foundation to promote research and carried out this mandate through organising seminars, scholarly networking on Canada, and Dr. Ian Hart, who high profile lectures, workshops and conferences. won an ESRC Post Doctoral award to work on aspects of We also run a fellowship programme and edit two US culture and institutions. On the administrative side, publications series on the Americas, one of which is the as of last year we now share staff with the Institute of Palgrave Americas List, the other, our in-house series. Commonwealth Studies, and last year welcomed a new We are particularly proud of the fact that we have the Manager, Paul Sullivan, a new Deputy Manager, Selina largest interdisciplinary Post Graduate programme on Hannaford, and a new Personal Assistant, Alegria Perez the Americas in the UK. Last year we had 53 students – all of whom, with Olga Jimenez managing our events, on our Masters courses and 24 students on our Doctoral help to make things run smoothly even at the busiest programme. Some of their achievements in the past times of the year. Sadly, though, we had to say farewell year are recorded in this newsletter. We were very to Ame Berges, our economist, and Adrian Pearce pleased that the MA in Latin American Studies attracted who left to join King’s History Department. Adrian did a Marshall Scholar this year, Austin McKinney, who leave us an excellent legacy, however, as ISA has now added to the number of students from overseas, some published his edited book on the MAS and Bolivia, of whom were beneficiaries of our ‘Bicentenary Bursary which was launched to a packed audience last year. Scheme’ marking Latin American Independence. For next year, as Graham Woodgate’s course on As part of its role in fostering high quality research, ISA the Environment has shown a sharp rise in student has continued to expand its range of scholarly networks numbers, we are offering a new Master’s programme with particular success in the area of Caribbean on Environment and Development in Latin America and studies. Kate Quinn launched the ‘Westminster in the the Caribbean, and expect it to be a popular course Caribbean: History, Legacies, Challenges’ network, as concern over climate change and environmental which considers how the political model inherited matters is attracting more student interest. from Britain was adapted to the conditions of the Caribbean, its impact on Caribbean democracy and We were particularly pleased to welcome new staff the challenges the model has faced over the period of to our faculty. Dr Paulo Drinot joined the Institute as independence. The Caribbean Postgraduate Network a Senior Lecturer in History in October 2010, and he was also established to bring together students from has taken over the management of the Latin American around the world who share a common interest in the programme. As well as convening ISA’s events Paulo Caribbean to discuss their work with regional specialists has launched a research network on the timely theme in a friendly and informal setting, sometimes made even of Crises of Capitalism in the Americas. The first friendlier with the assistance of fine Caribbean rum! event, ‘The Great Depression and its Legacies in the Americas’, held in June, explored the social and political A key feature of the Institute’s work has always legacies of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Two been its extensive events calendar covering a wide new Postdoctoral Fellows, both historians, are also range of themes across the Americas. Among the very welcome additions to our staff, both working on highlights last year were events debating the scholarly 2
research on memory organised by ISA Research student Alejandra Serpente, and a symposium on Native Americans organised by Amy Hinterberger. Our speakers featured such prestigious figures as the Brazilian Foreign Minister Ambassador Antonio Patriota, the Ambassador of Peru His Excellency Hernán Couturier, the U.S. Policy Director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget Marc L. Goldwein, the playwright and critic Bonnie Greer, and the recently reelected member of the Peruvian Congress Javier Diez Canseco, amongst others. The ‘Rising Brazil’ seminar series, organised in association with the Brazil Institute at King’s College, was a highlight of the 2010-11 roster, and engaged with a range of crucial questions surrounding the character and meaning of Brazil’s emergence as a pivotal player in global governance. The annual ISA/British Library Americas Plural event, cosponsored by the Eccles Centre for American Studies, this year focused on ‘Legacies of Emancipation in the Americas’ with a panel of speakers offering North American, Brazilian and Caribbean perspectives on the theme. Further information on these events and many other events is included elsewhere in this newsletter.
another eventful year in 2011-2012 and are looking forward to welcoming the new intake of students in the next week or so. We hope that those of you who can, will be able to join us for an Alumnae event that we will hold in the Spring so that old connections can be renewed and our networks strengthened. Remember that in 2015 ISA will be celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the two Institutes that were merged in 2004 – the Institute of Latin American Studies and the Institute of US Studies. It is not long to go and we will soon be planning a series of initiatives to celebrate the anniversary and to reflect on the directions that American studies have taken over the decades. Watch this space for further details! With all good wishes, and do keep in touch,
Maxine Molyneux
As in previous years we welcomed several visiting fellows. We have included reports of the research undertaken by two of them, Stefanie Kron and Felipe Pereira Loureiro, elsewhere in this newsletter. We were fortunate in securing a SAS Professorial Fellowship, and much enjoyed having Professor Tristan Platt, a world renowned specialist on Andean history and anthropology with us for almost two terms. We had some enjoyable outreach activities, including a very successful event on the history of Tango, and tango instruction was offered to the audience as part of the 2010-11 Bloomsbury Festival. Glad to report that almost everyone joined in. 2010 also saw the Institute featured regularly in the media not only through staff interviews but also thanks to Professor Iwan Morgan’s research project on the United States Presidency Centre UK Survey of US Presidents. The BBC showcased his research on the most popular and unpopular US presidents, featuring his findings as a key item on their news site, which led to a surge of new traffic for the ISA website. That is a brief round-up of some of the things that have been going on at ISA in the last year. We are expecting 3
Staff Highlights Professor Maxine Molyneux
Most of my time has been taken up with carrying out the duties of Director and, due to time constraints, it has not been possible to take advantage of opportunities to travel to Latin America. However, there have been several highlights. With my other hat on, as Chair of the Steering Group of the Human Rights Consortium, I was delighted to deliver the oration at the graduation ceremony for the School’s Honorary Doctorate Louise Arbour. A pre-eminent jurist and one of the most distinguished members of the international human rights movement, she has a profound commitment to law and legal process, and an abhorrence of injustice, marked by a brilliant career in the Canadian judiciary and in international humanitarian law. As Chief Prosecutor of the Human Rights court at the Hague, and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour made legal history by indicting Slobadan Milosovic. Louise Arbour graciously agreed to my chairing a lively Q & A with students. Other activities revolved around continuing research priorities currently focused on poverty and inequality. I was pleased to lead a research project on the Andean region for CARE International. This research investigated three Cash Transfer programmes, Juntos in Peru, Bono de Desarrollo Humano in Ecuador, and Bono Juana Azurduy, in Bolivia. Through qualitative and participatory research with women beneficiaries, and interviews with key informants, the study examined whether and in what ways, conditional cash transfer programmes might promote gender equity and women’s empowerment. The report and its recommendations will be presented at a workshop later in the year and has been translated into Spanish for circulation in the region. One of the most enjoyable commissions of the year was a trip to St Lucia to serve as Expert Adviser, Facilitator and workshop session leader for UNDP/UNIFEM/UNICEF’s training programme for nine welfare ministries of the Eastern Caribbean, 2010. The theme of the workshop was Social Protection for the most vulnerable groups
in society. It was also interesting to participate in the process that eventuated in the European Commission’s European Report on Development. The preparation of the report, now published as Social Protection for Inclusive Growth, 2010, involved attending a meeting at the Sorbonne in Paris to present a paper evaluating the impact of Cash Transfers. This was followed by an invitation to discuss the draft of the report at a meeting in Florence at the International University. The other working trip was to Madrid as an invited participant to the preparatory meeting to discuss the draft strategy paper for the EU-Latin America Summit, which took place at the Cervantes Centre in Madrid. A very welcome development in international policy is the return of inequality as an issue for concern after thirty years of virtual neglect. Questions of social justice drive the ethical considerations in this debate but it is the corrosive social and political effects of inequality that have begun to worry policymakers and governments. It has opened up a window of opportunity to push for measures that will not just tackle poverty but focus on the broader and more challenging questions of how to tackle the deep inequalities that arose over the last thirty years. It is this question that is currently the focus of my research and policy work. Other highlights to report – two of my supervisees from Argentina Constanza Tabbush and Valeria Esquival gained their doctorates, - both on aspects of social policy, and both are set on very successful career paths. I was pleased to take on a new Doctoral student from Chile, Juan Venegas, who is working on the very topical issue of the student protests in his country that are directed against the neoliberal reforms of education. As part of the ongoing work of ISA’s social policy network, together with Jasmine Gideon from Birkbeck, I organised a one day workshop on Gender and Social Policy in Latin America with the aim of helping to foster research collaborations in this emerging field of study. Thirty five participants attended and we are now in the process of preparing a special issue for publication, consisting of a selection of papers that were presented.
For more on staff see: http://americas.sas.ac.uk/about-us/staff.html
Professor Iwan Morgan
Under the auspices of ISA’s US Presidency Centre, I organized the first ever UK academic poll of US presidential performance that attracted considerable media attention, notably from the BBC news website and THE. The results, announced in early 2011, put FDR top, Lincoln second - and George Bush also ran in the bottom ten! Notable US events included the launch of the presidential survey website, talks by Marc Goldwein - executive secretary of the Obama Fiscal Commission, and a symposium co-organized with the British Library’s Eccles Centre to mark the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. I published two edited collections (and contributed chapters to each) based on previous ISA symposia: Assessing George W. Bush’s Legacy: The Right Man? and Presidents
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in the Movies: American History and Politics, both published in Palgrave’s Evolving American Presidency series. I also contributed an essay on Nixon biographies to a major new collection - Melvin Small, ed., A Companion to Richard Nixon (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). Meanwhile, I submitted the manuscript for three further edited collections to appear in 2012 on: the student civil rights movement in the 1960s; the Republican search for a new majority 1960-1980; and the legacy of Watergate. In addition, I accepted an invitation from the History News Network to do regular blogs on the debt limitation imbroglio. I completed my fourth year as chair of the Historians of the Twentieth Century United States executive committee and second year as member of the British Association of American studies executive committee. My personal highlight was being awarded the American Politics Group’s 2010 Richard Neustadt Prize for my book, The Age of Deficits: Presidents and Unbalanced Budgets from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush.
Dr Paulo Drinot
I joined ISA in October 2010 as Senior Lecturer in Latin American History from the University of Manchester where I taught in the history department for five years. I should say re-joined as I was a member of ISA in 2001-2002 when I was the Hewlett Research Fellow, a post shared between the then ILAS and the Latin American Centre in Oxford. This year I published two books: an edited volume on the travels of Che Guevara (Che’s Travels: The Making of a Revolutionary in 1950s Latin America, Duke University Press, 2010), which we launched at ISA in October, and a monograph (The Allure of Labor: Workers, Race, and the Making of the Peruvian State (Duke University Press, 2011). I also published a paper on Peruvian president Alan García in an edited collection in Argentina (English version forthcoming in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies) and book reviews in the journals Social History, International Affairs, and Cold War History. I gave papers at a couple of conferences organised by ISA, at the meeting of the Society of Latin American Studies in St Andrews, and at the universities of Sheffield, Oxford, LSE, and Montréal and gave talks on the 2011 Peruvian elections at ISA and the Houses of Parliament. In April, I gave a series of seminars at the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos in Lima. I also served as an external examiner for the history department of Swarthmore College, USA.
Dr Deborah Toner
I was appointed as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Latin American History at the Institute for the Study of the Americas in May 2011, to work on the research facilitation project “Liberalism in the Americas: A Digital Library”. This involves identifying and collating documents related to the theory and praxis of liberalism in Argentina, Mexico and Peru during the long nineteenth century, as well as convening an international network of scholars to participate in events, publications, and other collaborations associated with the project. Since joining the Institute, I have given a paper at the conference “Food and Drink: Their Social, Political and Cultural Histories” at the University of Central Lancashire, and have put the finishing touches to an article, on the relationship between drinking places and the regulation of social space in Mexico City, c. 1780-1900, which will shortly appear in the journal Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Vol. 25, Nos 1-2 (2011). I am also currently co-editing a special edition of the journal Brewery History, based on a series of papers to be presented at a conference hosted by the Centre for the History of Retailing and Distribution, University of Wolverhampton, where I will be convening two panels in September 2011.
Inuit studies in Canada– sociologists, legal experts, historians, artists, anthropologists and cultural studies scholars- gathered at Senate House for a one-day conference organized by the British Association for Canadian Studies Aboriginal Studies Circle and the Institute. Under the title ‘Canadian Aboriginal Biopolitics and Biopower’, this conference focused on key issues such as health and well-being, cultural expression, self-government and self-determination. Participants came from Canada, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. In April 2011 I was awarded a grant by the International Academic Relations Program of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Government of Canada. Through this funding the Institute will continue to promote and support the explorations of the relationship between diversity, identity and governance in Canada through a multi-disciplinary international network and research conference. Specifically, the funding will be used to support an international symposium entitled ‘Identity, Diversity and Governance: Canadian Perspectives’ (October 3rd) which will build links between those interested in forms of governance and their relationship to issues of diversity and identity in Canada. With support from scholars from the British Association for Canadian Studies (BACS) and the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS), the event will provide an opportunity to foster fresh thinking which can identify future research priorities as well as address issues of key relevance to Canadian politics and policy. As my fellowship draws to a close I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all the wonderful colleagues and friends I have made at the Institute and Queen Mary. I have learnt a tremendous amount about what it means to think with the idea ‘Americas Plural’ and hope that I have instilled some ‘Spirit of the North’ in the phrase itself.
Professor Kevin J. Middlebrook
During the 2010-11 academic year I concluded work on a coauthored monograph titled Organized Labour and Politics in Mexico: Changes, Continuities and Contradictions, which will be published by ISA in early 2012. I also continued work on a booklength study of the international defence of workers’ rights and the labour institutions created in association with the North American Free Trade Agreement, field research for which was supported by a grant from the Nuffield Foundation.
At ISA, I taught the MA course on ‘Democratization in Latin America’ and served as convenor of the MA in Latin American Area Studies and the MSc in Latin American Politics degrees, as well as overall coordinator of the Institute’s Latin America programme. I also supervised the work of five research (MPhil/PhD) students and seven MA students (six of whom received a mark of ‘merit’ or After completing my doctorate in Sociology at LSE I began a one-year ‘distinction’ on their dissertations). postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute where I was responsible for promoting scholarship on Canada, as well as doing some teaching at In 2010 I concluded my term as Treasurer and member of the Queen Mary and writing. Through the Institute I came into contact Executive Council of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA). with a diverse range of scholars in the UK and beyond all involved I continue to serve as co-chair of LASA’s organized section on in studying Canada from a diverse range of perspectives. During Mexico, which now has approximately 480 members. I also serve the course of my fellowship I organized events by a range of these on the editorial boards of the Journal of Latin American Studies and scholars. In February of this year Dr. Kaitlynn Mendes ( De Montfort Estudios Políticos (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México). University) gave an evening seminar on Reading Chatelaine: Dr. Marion Hilliard and 1950s Women’s Health Advice. In May the Institute hosted a group of leading experts on First Nations, Métis and
Dr Amy Hinterberger
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Dr Graham Woodgate In 2010/11, I continued to play an important role in the delivery of ISA’s Latin American and Caribbean teaching programmes. I also developed a proposal for a new MSc in Environment and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, which will launch in 2011-12. In October 2010, I completed a contract with the Centre for Development, Environment and Policy (SOAS) in which I coordinated the production of a multi-media MSc distance learning module in Sustainable Forest Management. In February I made a visit to Mexico where I delivered a three-day research workshop entitled “‘Frente al cambio climático: Gestión de los recursos naturales y regulación de conflictos sociales y jurídicos en zonas boscosas de América Latina’.for members of the Ibero-Latin American Network for the Use and Conservation of Biotic Resources (RILACREB), and made field visits to associated research sites. An account of the issues raised during my visit was published as a blog article on ‘Intercambio Climático’. I welcomed various speakers addressing environment and development issues to ISA during the past year and helped in the organisation of, and contributed a paper to one of ISA’s most successful conferences of 201011 ‘Responding to Climate Change in the Caribbean’.
Dr Matthew Alan Hill
I joined ISA as a postdoctoral research fellow in US politics. I am currently working on two projects. First, in Reporting America in the Age of Global War I am creating an online database on UK perspectives towards the US from 1914 to 1945. It will range from Foreign Office reports to newspaper articles and will include discussions of US economic, political and social/ cultural life. Second, in the Women and US Foreign Policy Oral History Project I am interviewing people involved and affected by US foreign policy with particular attention being paid to women. These interviews will be placed into an online repository. I previously was a lecturer in politics at De Montfort University, Oxford Brookes University and Cardiff University. I completed my Ph.D. on US democracy promotion in Bosnia and Afghanistan under Presidents Clinton and Bush at the University of Ulster. My MA was in Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies and my two undergraduate degrees were at the University of Kent and Bath Spa University.
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Dr Kate Quinn
This academic year, I have been working on a number of publications, including a collection co-edited with Professor Paul Sutton on Haiti from Duvalier to Préval (forthcoming, 2012) and a special issue of MaComère, the Journal of the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars, on the theme of ‘Women and National Political Struggles in the Caribbean’ (vol.12, no.2, Fall 2010). As Vice-Chair of the Society for Caribbean Studies, I was heavily involved in the organisation of their annual conference, this year held at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool. During the year I gave papers on my research into Caribbean Black Power at the University of the West Indies (St. Augustine), Warwick and St Andrew’s. I continued to run the joint ISA/ICS Caribbean seminar series and was involved in the organisation of three conferences on themes from climate change to trade and migration. With ISA PhD student Steve Cushion, I founded a new network for postgraduates researching the Caribbean, which held its inaugural conference in May (see http://americas.sas.ac.uk/networks/caribbeanpostgraduate-network.html). I enjoyed teaching a record number of students on my two MA courses, The Caribbean from the Haitian Revolution to the Cuban Revolution and Politics, Society and Development in the Modern Caribbean.
Dr Ian Hart
I am a post-doctoral fellow at ISA sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council. My work examines debates in the twentieth-century United States over how national societal progress should have been measured. Similar debates are ongoing in many countries, including the UK, and a significant objective of my year-long post-doctoral position is to engage with members of the policy-making community in the UK and abroad to foster discussion of the lessons of this history; I am organising a symposium, scheduled for January 2012, as part of this project. So far this year I have refined a monograph which is under consideration by a leading university press. Also, I recently gave a paper at the UK Historians of the Twentieth Century United States annual conference, entitled “How the Cold War affected domestic policy under Eisenhower: evidence from the commissioning of ‘Goals for Americans’”. I am now working on several journal articles.
Library Collection ISA’s library collections moved into the Senate House envelope in August 2009 and were co-located with the Senate House Latin American collection, adjacent to the United States Studies collection, in the North Block of Senate House. Both the ISA and SHL Latin American collections were re-classified to the Library of Congress classification scheme and the combined strengths of these two research collections now form a new major regional and national resource for Latin American Studies. In September 2011, the new joint Latin American collection, together with the U.S. Studies collection (one of the largest general collections on the U.S. in the U.K.) will move into the South Block of Senate House, to the South end of the 6th floor. It will be extremely useful for researchers to have these two major area studies collections in close proximity, with the added advantage of having the Institute of Commonwealth Studies collections nearby, at the North end of the same floor. Researchers will also benefit from the wide range of both general and subject-specific electronic resources offered by Senate House Libraries (formerly known as the ULRLS - University of London Research Library Services), as well as having access to related collections within Senate House Library, and to the wealth of resources held within other libraries within the collective Senate House Libraries such as the Institute of Historical Research and the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.
ISA Fellowships How to Apply
2010-2011 Visiting Fellows
The Institute for the Study of the Americas has three prestigious fellowship streams:
Associate Professor Catherine Krull, Queen’s University, Toronto
• Senior Research Fellowships • Visiting Research Fellowships • Visiting Professorial Fellowships
Professor Brian McKercher, Royal Military College of Canada Dr Libia Villazana
For full information on these schemes, and to apply, please visit the ISA website at: http://americas.sas.ac.uk/fellowships/institute-fellows.html
Dr Stefanie Kron, Freie Universität, Berlin Dr Rivke Jaffe, Leiden University Professor Jocelyn Létourneau, Laval University 7
Visiting Fellows Felipe Pereira Loureiro, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Economic policy in Brazil at the beginning of the 1960s My Visiting Doctoral Fellowship at the Institute for the Study of the America lasted for one year, from April 2010 to April 2011. ISA’s fellowship was part of the PhD I am developing at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, on Economic History of Latin America. The thesis explores economic policy in Brazil at the beginning of the 1960s. It focuses mainly on key aspect of economic policy-making during the Quadros and Goulart presidencies (1961-1964), notably international economic relations, and the influence of role of critical social actors, such as workers and entrepreneurs, on the policy-making process. This was a time in Brazil of serious economic imbalances, unprecedented social unrest, and increasing popular participation in the political arena. Also, Goulart’s government preceded the 1964 Military Coup, which ushered in a dictatorship that continued until 1985, bringing major historical implications not only for Brazil, but also for Latin America. While in London, I undertook archival research mainly at the British Library and the National Archives in Kew Gardens. In addition, during the summer vacation, I made a short research trip to the USA, working in the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, the J.F. Kennedy Library, Boston, and the L. B. Johnson Library, Austin. At these locations, I encountered documents on British and US assessment of Brazilian economic policymaking – manuscripts such as diplomatic telegrams, and financial and labour reports. These sources, in addition to official opinions, also contained references to the attitudes and perceptions of British and US businesses, and about the stance of Brazilian firms and labour organisations. This data complements material I had already gathered in Brazil, providing different interpretations and evaluations of the formulation and the implementation of economic policy in Brazil at that period of time, not least the capacity of the Brazilian state, its competence along with national and international private firms, and the stance of organised labour.
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I also took the opportunity at ISA (and also in other schools and institutes of the University of London) to attend a range of seminars and workshops. These embraced from research training and methodology to the discussion of different subjects, particularly on Latin American history, economy, politics and society. Some of the seminars and workshops were specifically dedicated to the needs of early-career research students, others provided opportunities for research students and junior academic to discuss their work with more senior colleagues. The range of topics discussed was critically important for me, given the nature of my research, which embraces such disciplines as development, economics, history, international relations and political science. I also had the opportunity to present at ISA one of my chapters, about the USBrazilian economic relations during Quadros and Goulart presidencies. The presentation was extremely useful, providing me with invaluable feedbacks and insights.
Taking a research fellowship at ISA makes you part of a dynamic research community, with access to the unique Latin American and US Studies library collections, our wide range of academic events, and the opportunity to publish online for free through SASSpace. For more info visit: http://americas.sas.ac.uk/fellowships
Stefanie Kron, Freie Universität Berlin Regional Policy Responses to Migration in North and Central America
Furthermore it tends to establish new forms of social control on mobile populations as well as to reframe the social inequalities that lead to migration in terms of beneficial and unwanted flows. Additionally I claim that Over the past two decades cross-border migration migration management tends to obscure or even reinforce has become an increasingly important field of political regional power asymmetries between the metropolitan intervention all over the world. Furthermore, policy North and peripheral Central American countries. responses to transnational migration are becoming more and more regionalised and multilateral in character As preliminary research findings I consider that the thus converting intergovernmental agencies such as migration management paradigm has shaped a new the International Organization for Migration (IOM) into migration regime in North and Central America. The important new actors. Within this context, the idea of institutional arrangements of this regime link the international migration management constitutes an increasing undocumented cross-border movements increasingly predominant framework of discourses and of the region to organized crime, especially to human practices claiming to ‘optimise’ the impact of international smuggling and trafficking. At the regional-level of migration by creating a new global regime of rules and the Puebla Process, this anti-trafficking discourse norms for the governance of cross-border mobility. creates a consensus and a notion of equal partnership between the North American migrant receiving states My research project explores how the migration and the peripheral sending and transit countries in management paradigm materialises at the regional the Central American region. But the countries of the and local levels in North and Central America. I Central American sub-region, in fact, do participate focus empirically on the “Regional Conference on unequally: that is, as deficient partners and as objects Migration in North and Central America” (RCM). The of reinforced migration management interventions RCM is better known as the Puebla Process and was by intergovernmental organisations such as the IOM. founded in 1996. All governments from Canada to Panama as well as a wide range of intergovernmental This is especially the case with regard to the extremely organisations such as the IOM, have since joined porous borders of the Central American countries. These the Puebla Process. Regarding the national and are being constituted as a regional security problem local level, I emphasise Costa Rica, especially the and converted into laboratories in new technologies of dynamics at the Costa Rican-Nicaraguan border region. government. The Costa Rican-Nicaraguan border, for instance, is characterised by the most diverse irregular After having finished fieldwork in Central America, cross border movements. However, the ethnographic conducted between March and September 2010, I analysis of border actors and practices revealed that a spent four months as a visiting research fellow at ISA territorially based border control and a repressive approach to process data, to develop the framework of analysis to irregular migration are neither feasible nor envisaged. and to prepare a seminar paper on my research. Thanks to the opportunity to use the library and to Migration and border management activities rather present and discuss my work in an international context tend to establish a new governmentality of the with the professional ISA colleagues I developed permeability of the border as well as of the movements a multilevel framework of analysis informed by and bodies tracking throughout the border region. The studies on neoliberal governmentality, international anti-trafficking discourse thereby works as a leading government and ethnographic regime analysis. narrative for police and migration officers as well as for NGO representatives in order to reorganise the field of In the paper prepared for the lecture at ISA I irregular migration by creating ‘suspicious’ and ‘familiar’ argue that migration management shapes the border crossers as well as ‘tolerable’ and ‘intolerable’ institutional arrangements of a new regional mobility practices of cross-border mobility. Thus, the reframing regime, in both North and Central America alike. of irregular migration as a security issue both reinforce This institutional arrangement is characterised the depolitization of migration policies and obscure by regionalisation and multilateralisation. the social inequalities that lead to irregular migration. 9
PhD Student News Geoff Goodwin
I returned to London at the end of August 2010, having spent eleven months in Ecuador undertaking fieldwork and writing draft chapters of my thesis. I was based at FLACSO in Quito but I visited various locations in the highland region, spending most time in the cantons of Guamote and Cayambe. Since returning, I have concentrated on organising data, writing chapters, and preparing for a short follow-up trip to Ecuador. In addition, I helped organise a conference at ISA (The Americas and the Cold War) in December 2010 and presented a paper at the PILAS Annual Conference in June 2011.
Alejandra Serpente
I co-organised a symposium held on 23-24 November 2010 at ISA titled ‘Between the past and the future: Challenging narratives of memory in Latin America,’ which brought together various scholars and students from Latin America. The keynote speaker was the noted Argentine sociologist Elizabeth Jelin. Currently, I am co-editing a special issue of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies on the key contributions in the symposium, to be published in March 2012. I have a chapter in the book The Memory of State Terrorism in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay published by Palgrave MacMillan (2011). I was asked to reflect on the three Chilean chapters at the recent book launch at the Latin American Centre, Oxford University (see the link to the podcast http://www. csls.ox.ac.uk/otjr.php?show=podcasts). I presented a paper at SLAS 2011 in the panel, ‘Latin American Forced Migrants and Diasporas Living in the UK.’
Photograph by Geoff Goodwin
William Booth
My research on the Mexican left during the early Cold War took me to Washington D.C. and Mexico City for most of 2010, with archival work in governmental and party repositories. Since then, I have been attempting to weave together the threads and hope to finish a first draft in the next few months. I have also presented several papers this year and in December, along with Geoff Goodwin, I organised a conference at ISA entitled ‘The Americas and the Cold War’.
Steve Cushion
I spent this year writing up my thesis and recently handed in a completed first draft. I gave a paper at the annual conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies on the role of women in the Cuban insurrection, the substance of which has been published in the journal Macomère (Volume 12, Number 2) entitled “A Working Class Heroine is also something to be”. In November shall be presenting a paper at the founding conference of the Asociación de Historia Económica del Caribe in Santa Marta, Colombia entitled “La resistencia popular Sarah Fearn My PhD research focuses on indigenous movements cubana al convenio azucarero internacional de 1953”. in Peru and how local and national level institutions encourage and/or constrain these organisations. The Richard Dotor past year was spent in the Andean mountains and My PhD is a revisionist history of the Southern Policy the Amazon jungle where I observed and interviewed of Ulysses S. Grant during the Reconstruction era. various indigenous communities and their local In the last year I have completed all original chapters organisations. Data was also collected from local as drafts and am now in the process of finalising archives, government bodies and the media. The them. My thesis focusses on Ulysses S. Grant’s policy study focuses on three cases in geographically and towards the American South after the Civil War and culturally distinct areas of Peru, allowing a comparative is an attempt to provide clarity to an underdeveloped analysis that aims to explain why Peru’s indigenous and misunderstood history. This year I hope to apply movements have followed a very different trajectory for final writing up status. In addition to studying I to those of their neighbours in Bolivia and Ecuador. am also a coordinator for Higher Education courses at Basingstoke College of Technology, and lecture full time. 10
Michael Espinoza
My research topic focuses on American conservative rhetoric and the use of the term ‘socialism’ in PostCold War America. Over the past year, my research has focused on the historical context of how American conservatives use the socialist label. The timeline I covered was from 1935 to 1988, from President Franklin Roosevelt to President Ronald Reagan. I have also focused on how American conservatives define socialism. Their definition differs from one that is found in political science, history, or even the Oxford dictionary. Conservatives put American liberalism side by side with communism, socialism, fascism and totalitarianism.
Dylan Vernon
Constanza Tabbush
In March 2011 Constanza Tabbush defended her thesis “Exclusion and Agency. A Gender Analysis of Cash Transfers in Argentina and Chile (2002-2008)”. Her PhD research resulted in two main publications in major journals of the field: “Latin American women’s protection after adjustment: a feminist critique of conditional cash transfers in Chile and Argentina” (2010) in Oxford Development Studies, and “The possibilities for and constraints on agency: Situating women’s public and hidden voices in Greater Buenos Aires” (2009) in the Journal of International Development. Currently she is undertaking new research on gender, emotions and politics in Argentina through the study of the social movement led by Milagro Sala, Organización Barrial Túpac Amaru in the Province of Jujuy.
I am an ISA PhD research student in the second year of work on a thesis provisionally entitled The Making of a Patronage Democracy: An Examination of the Nature and Implications of Political Clientelism in PostIndependence Belize. After a successful fieldwork trip to Belize conducted between October 2010 and April 2011, I have commenced writing-up. Using post-independence Belize as an illustrative and critical case study, the thesis aims to critically re-visit the manifestations of rampant and adaptive political clientelism and its implications for democratic governance in the small states of the Commonwealth Caribbean. Between May and June this year, I made paper presentations around this topic at the First ISA Researching the Caribbean PhD Student Workshop in London and at the 35th Annual Society for Caribbean Studies Conference in Liverpool. My studies are supported by a United Kingdom Commonwealth Scholarship.
Photograph by Dylan Vernon
For details of PhD Study at ISA please visit: http://americas.sas.ac.uk/postgraduate-study/programmes-of-study/research-degrees.html
Olivia Saunders
I have nearly completed writing up my PhD thesis (“Britain and the Bolivian Revolution, 1946-1956”). The project analyses the relationship between Britain and Bolivia immediately before and after the National Revolution of April 1952, examining the interplay between domestic events and the broader international context. It is based on archival research in the UK, Washington DC, and Bolivia. During the past year I have presented papers at the ISA conference on the Americas and the Cold War, and an international history conference in Canada. I was invited to give a talk to the Anglo-Bolivian Society, and was subsequently co-opted onto their executive council.
Weronika Ozieranska
I commenced my studies at ISA in October 2010. My research concerns the politics of electoral reforms in Latin America and during the past year I have been working predominantly on specifying the research focus, selecting cases and developing research questions. Together with the literature review these issues have ultimately been integrated into a draft first chapter. In brief, I will be focusing on how the processes of transitional and post-transitional electoral reforms unfolded in Mexico, Chile and Ecuador. Moreover, I have also attended numerous research training courses as well as participated in the PILAS 2011 Conference. 11
MA Fieldwork grants Euan MacKay
Holly Perman Turnbull
This summer I travelled to Santiago de Cuba and Esmeraldas, Ecuador to carry out research into the subject of my MA dissertation on ‘Race and Reggaetón in Contemporary Cuba and Ecuador’. The central aim of my research was to observe and compare the ways in which this musical genre and perceptions of it (from within and without) reflect, reinforce, (re)construct and challenge dominant or official notions of ‘blackness’ in different national contexts, paying particular attention to lyrical content, sonic structure and aspects of performance. Over a five week period I did the best I could to infiltrate the local reggaetón scenes in Santiago and Esmeraldas, conducting interviews with local artists and cultural policy makers, attending concerts and recording sessions and collecting as much music as I could. It was a fantastically rewarding experience and I am very grateful to the Institute for making this invaluable research trip possible. One of Grupo de Arte Callejero’s activities commemorating Rodolfo Walsh by Danielle House
My research explores the ways in which Puerto Rican politicians have defined and deployed ideas of freedom in the debate surrounding the island’s peculiar relationship with the United States. I argue that although contending visions of freedom lie at the heart of this debate, these have not been adequately studied in the otherwise comprehensive literature on Puerto Rico’s status question. My fieldwork in New York and San Juan enabled me to compare ideologies of freedom across Puerto Rico’s three main political parties. The contrasting interpretations I found in the speeches and writings of leading estadolibristas, independentistas and estadistas highlight the importance of freedom, and perhaps explain its illusiveness, in the Free Associated State of Puerto Rico.
Babak Farrahi
I went to Mexico to further my research into freedom of information laws there. In Mexico City I had a productive meeting at CIDE, where I was also able to get hold of some very useful data from the study that they had done on this topic. Later I was able to go to the Institutes for Transparency there and in Guadalajara too as well as making useful contact with NGOs and civil society researchers. I was also able to make great use of libraries at different universities throughout the trip which gave me a lot of material for my research.
Danielle House
My field research took place over three weeks in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I studied several memorials across the city commemorating the human rights violations of the last dictatorship. As a student with a background in Human Geography I aimed to bring together the progressive work on memory and memorialisation coming out of Latin America and critical geographies, in order to start to understand the spatialities present in these memory sites. I made several visits to the sites, met with people involved in their creation and spoke to academics working locally on the subject. The trip was an invaluable personal experience for me, being able to observe firsthand the interactions at play in memorialisation, and one that I hope can provide rich insights for the field.
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For more info on ISA’s Master’s programmes please visit: http://americas.sas.ac.uk/postgraduate-study/ masters-programmes.html
Pierre Moorsom
My seven week fieldtrip was spent conducting research in Mexican national parks as part of a comparative study of protected area management and ownership. Mexico is an excellent place to undertake such research precisely because of the diversity of forms of management and ownership that exist there. My first four weeks were spent in the Parque Nacional Nevado de Toluca where I worked in tandem with the Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Mexico, taking part in focus groups and carrying out interviews with local people, university academics and students; I was even able to enjoy several days living in the park itself with a local family and taking part in security patrols through the forest designed to fight illegal forestry. The rest of my time was equally rewarding and was divided between the Corredor Biologico Chichinautzin in the state of Morelos, where I was lucky enough to interview the leader of a community ecotourism project in a village called Amatlán and a regional government official among others, and the Parque Nacional Lagunas de Chacahua on the coast in the state of Oaxaca. There, quite apart from enjoying some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever witnessed, I met another leader of a community ecotourism project who was particularly concerned about the deterioration of the region’s fragile mangrove trees. Overall it was an invaluable experience and hopefully my research will be a useful contribution to a growing body of work concerned with the deteriorating state of the world’s forests.
Laura Dowley
I travelled to Colombia to carry out fieldwork for my dissertation on Afro-Chocoan music and identity. Chocó is the poorest department of Colombia. Around 90% of its population is black. Musical practices are an essential part of social life in the region. I spent two weeks in Quibdó, the capital of Chocó where I spent a lot of time with the Asinch, an organisation of musicians and academics who research and promote traditional Chocoan music. I interviewed many musicians who took me to listen to traditional music in local settings. On the national day for Afro-Colombians I went to a big concert in the main square where traditional dancers and musicians as well as musicians of more contemporary styles played throughout the day and night. Staff at the University of Chocó were extremely helpful in allowing me access to resources and letting me sit in on their classes. I spent a week in Bogotá at the end of my trip in order to speak to and go to the concerts of the many contemporary Chocoan bands who have moved there, and to speak to specialists on the subject of AfroColombia at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
Cattle Ranching in the Nevado de Toluca National Park. Photograph by Pierre Moorsom
Rebecca Ross
I spent an exciting five weeks in Santiago, Chile, doing research for my dissertation, titled ‘Politics, Power and Prayer - The role of the Catholic Church in Pinochet’s Chile’. I chose to stay in a very small university residence and thus got to know Chile through the people I lived with as well as through my research experiences. I spent some time chasing interviews, then began to visit the archives of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, the Catholic Church’s extensive organisation created to provide legal and material aid to those persecuted during the Pinochet regime, and trawl through some of its vast primary materials. I used the National Library for archived newspapers, magazines and other sources, as well as the library of the Jesuit Alberto Hurtado University. I did a range of interviews - with the ex Foreign Minister under Pinochet, left and right wing academics, journalists, lawyers, priests and members of Opus Dei. My most exciting moment was finding myself, accidentally and initially unwillingly, partaking in a private lunch with five famous, old, revolutionary priests in a small parish room. I was completely unaware of who they were until their names were read aloud - after which I became a keen participant. 13
Programme Reports
Latin America
Caribbean
The joint ISA/ICS Caribbean Seminar Series held ten events hosting some sixteen speakers, including book launches for The Routledge History of Slavery (2011, edited by Gad Heuman and Trevor Burnard), Ben Bowling’s Policing the Caribbean: Transnational Security Co-operation in Practice (OUP, 2010) and Natalie Zacek’s Settler Society in the English Leeward Islands, 1670-1776 (CUP, 2010). The series also held panels on ‘Crime and Democracy in Contemporary Jamaica’ and ‘The Haitian Revolution and the World’ as well as seminars on topics ranging from 18th century Panama to the Cuban Communist Party Congress of 2011. This year also witnessed the founding of the new Caribbean Postgraduate Network, which held its inaugural conference in May. Lastly, two significant conferences were held during the year: first, the JISLAC-sponsored conference New Research on Migration, Politics and Policy between the Americas and Europe (25 February) and secondly, a two-day conference on Responding to Climate Change in the Caribbean (13-14 June).
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As in previous years, the Latin American events programme at ISA was outstanding. Regular seminars were held on a broad range of topics, including food sovereignty in Colombia, Cuban agroecology, mental illness in the Andes, US-Latin American relations in the Obama era, the Aztecs use of gold, Church-State conflict in early twentieth century Argentina, USBrazilian relations during the Alliance for Progress period, scientific research in interwar Argentina, the role of UNASUR in Bolivia, the influence of the Cuban revolution on 1960s and 1970s Latin America, state violence and race in Brazil, the political economy of the Spanish Empire, Dolores del Río, and the VW Beetle in Mexico. In a key electoral year, there were several events on Peru. These included a visit by Javier Diez Canseco, a former senator and prominent left-wing politician recently re-elected to Congress on Ollanta Humala’s ticket, and José De Echave, the new Deputy Minister for the environment. Two panels on the elections, which included presentations by the Peruvian ambassador and Michael Reid of the Economist magazine, were both extremely well attended. ISA also hosted several book launches, including Jelke Boesten’s monograph on social policy towards women in Fujimori’s Peru, Paulo Drinot’s edited volume on Che Guevara’s travels in 1950s Latin America, Rosemary Thorp and Maritza Paredes’s volume on ethnicity and inequality in Peru, Adrian Pearce’s edited volume on Evo Morales and the MAS, and Gian Luca Gardini and Peter Lambert’s volume on foreign policy in the region. Finally, ISA convened and/or hosted several major conferences on topics as varied as memory in post-conflict Latin America, Brazil’s ascendancy as a regional power, the Cold War, migration to and from Europe, policing in Latin America and Spain, gender and social policy, trading blocs in the region (with the participation of the ambassadors of Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia and Costa Rica), and the Great Depression and its social and political legacies. The annual joint event with the Eccles Centre at British Library focused on the legacies of emancipation from slavery in the Americas and included the participation of Professors Robin Blackburn, Richard Drayton and Denise Ferreira da Silva and the playwright and critic Bonnie Greer.
United States
The US programme had a very successful year. The US Presidency Centre organized the first ever UK academic poll of US presidential performance, whose results attracted considerable media interest when announced in early 2011. In addition to various symposia and talks, the US history seminar, which ISA co-organizes with other UL scholars, went from strength to strength, regularly attracting audiences of 20 or more to its fortnightly meetings. Other highlights included two talks by marc Goldwein (executive director of the Obama Fiscal commission), a conference co-organized with the Eccles Centre to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil war’s outbreak, and a series of talks on American Popular Culture (including one delivered by the distinguished Columbia academic Todd Gitlin). Matt Hill joined the US programme in October to
develop two digital projects over the next three years: Reporting America: UK Views of the US in World War II, and Women and US Foreign Policy. These projects will provide an invaluable resource for researchers in both fields. The US teaching programme suffered the loss of Tim Lynch, who departed for a post in the University of Melbourne in January. This necessitated recruitment of a visiting lecturer, and Nick Kitchen of the LSE brought his considerable expertise to bear in his very successful courses on US Foreign Policy. Nevertheless, the shrinkage of the US staff necessitated reordering of the teaching programme from 2011-12 onward. henceforth ISA will only operate on programme: MA in US Studies: history and Politics. However this will have a wide range of course options drawing on those available in UL colleges.
ISA Publications Institute for the Study of the Americas Series
Palgrave Macmillan/Institute for the Study of the Americas ‘Studies of the Americas’ Series
Presidents in the Movies, Iwan Morgan Evo Morales and the Movimiento Al Socialismo in Bolivia, the first term in context, 2006-2010, Adrian Pearce Negotiating the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Arashiro, Zuleika Fractured Politics, Peruvian Democracy Past and Present, John Crabtree Assessing George W. Bush’s Legacy: The Right Man?, Iwan W. Morgan and Philip John Davies Caamaño in London: the Exile of a Latin American Revolutionary, Fred Halliday
Negotiating the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Zuleika Arashiro The Nitrate King: A Biography of “Colonel” John Thomas North, William Edmundson Post-Colonial Trinidad: An Ethnographic Journal, Colin Clarke and Gillian Clarke Belize’s Independence and Decolonization in Latin America: Guatemala, Britain, and the UN, Assad Shoman The Origins of Mercosur: Democracy and Regionalization in South America, Gian Luca Gardini
Youth Violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile For further information, and to order ISA publications, Justice in Perspective, edited by Gareth A. Jones and please visit: http://americas.sas.ac.uk/publications.html Dennis Rodgers 15
Key Projects Liberalism in the Americas: A Digital Library
The project, which has been under way since June 2011, promotes the study of liberalism in comparative perspective, by creating an annotated digital library of resources that speaks to the development of liberal thought and praxis in Argentina, Peru, and Mexico c. 1780-1930. The primary aim of this project is to facilitate research that will provide new insights into political culture, economic policy, social development, international relations, and intellectual culture through a comparative, transnational, and collaborative approach to the study of liberalism in the Americas. The digital library, comprised of a wide variety of key texts and archival materials, in conjunction
with commissioned expert commentaries on these resources, is currently under development, in consultation with the British Library and the School of Advanced Study’s institutional repository SAS-space. The project also convenes an international network of scholars, from the UK, mainland Europe, the United States, and Latin America, who will participate in a programme of events, publications, and an online research community. Our launch event, featuring a plenary lecture by Prof. Greg Grandin (New York University) will take place on 31 October 2011. For more information about the project and network members, see our website: http://americas.sas.ac.uk/digital-resources-forre s e a rc h e rs / l i b e ra l i s m - i n - t h e - a m e r i c a s . h t m l
For more digital resources please see: http://americas.sas.ac.uk/digital-resources-for-researchers.html
COCARN
For more networks please see: http://americas.sas.ac.uk/networks.html
The Crises of Capitalism in the Americas Research Network was launched at an inaugural event held on 20 June 2011. COCARN has been set up to provide an institutional and intellectual framework, focused at ISA, to enable the development of collaborative research and research facilitation initiatives that enhance our understanding of key crises in the history of capitalism in the Americas and their impact on the region’s economies and societies, open new avenues for inter and multidisciplinary research on the history of capitalism that frame the American experience in a broader global context, and help shape current debates on the causes, nature, and consequences of the current global crisis.
institutional, and political context and consequences of the slump while paying careful attention to the ways in which hemispheric transformations were shaped by and in turn helped shape global processes.
The conference included contributions from leading historians of Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States based in the UK, the US, and Latin America. The papers presented at this inaugural conference, funded by the School of Advanced Study Dean’s Development Fund and now available on the ISA website, will form the basis of an edited volume to be published shortly. This publication will enhance our understanding of this crucial episode in the history of the region and The first event, ‘The Great Depression and its Legacies its impact on its societies and also provide scholars a in the Americas’, held on 20 June 2011, explored the timely and uniquely useful comparative perspective on social and political legacies of the Great Depression of the current crisis. So far, as in the 1930s, while the US the 1930s on the Americas. The current global financial has been hit hard by the crisis, much of Latin America crisis has produced (i) a new vantage point from which appears to have weathered its economic impact to re-assess the history of what remains (although that better than other regions. But, as many observers may change) the deepest economic crisis of the modern increasingly realise, the broader legacies of the current era and (ii) a re-assessment in policy circles of the nature, crisis in the Americas are only now coming into focus. impact, and responses to the Great Depression. The aim of this conference was to encourage historians of the The next COCARN event, organised jointly with the region widen the focus on the Great Depression beyond Argentine Research Students Network, will examine the its economic history to consider the broader social, economic, political, and cultural impact of the Argentine crisis of 2001, and will be held at ISA on 8 December 2011. 16
Women and US Foreign Policy / Reporting America in the Age of Global War
The project will be better as a consequence of integrating itself into the communities that it is working for; it will be tailor-made and be driven by their needs. The hope is that that level of integration will increase the chances of success.
What I love about my job is that I get to do research on two topics that are only tangentially linked and I have to work in completely different ways. I am sitting in Washington, D.C. writing this, with the ever constant whirring of the air conditioning having spent the last two weeks in the hottest place I’ve ever visited on earth. I feel like I am becoming a local as I am spending a good proportion of my time trying to work out how to get from A to B with spending as little time as I possibly can outside.
The other project I am working on is to create an online database that focuses on a number of differing perspectives of the US during WWII (1939-1945). Although not as glamorous as the other project, it allows the nerd in me to be fully sated. I get to go to the National Archives in Kew Gardens and digitise UK government documents, particularly the weekly reports on US affairs from the UK Embassy in Washington D.C. and reports from the various consulates. I enjoy opening the files and folders, not really knowing what I am going to read, the stale odours of the 60 year old pages gently waft up to my nose, and smell like the really old books in university libraries that no one ever really opens let alone read but yet are readily admired for their ability to survive the 21 century cull on physical materials. I also enjoy reading these documents because the foreign office staffers write so clearly and crisply. At times, it’s as if the words jump out of the page. And some of these documents show little cracks in the formalities of government and you glimpse in the margins their inked cynicisms and joys.
I am in D.C. because I am interviewing people for my project on the multidimensional relationship between women and US foreign policy (USFP). The aim is to create and sustain one of the world’s largest online repositories of interview data relating to this relationship. The project examines this relationship from the perspective of women working with or within the institutions of USFP, the introduction of gender concerns in foreign policy, women affected by USFP, and experts that can discuss this relationship. This is the initial trip of three, and I have been focussing on interviewing people from the first two categories outlined above. It has been interesting interviewing very powerful, successful and determined women on their perspectives of USFP, commonly undervalued in FP academic literature, as well as their experiences as a woman working for a government organisation. But I suppose it may be inevitable that I am going to be inspired by people who have traditionally had the cards stacked up against them, who wouldn’t right?
The aim of these sources is to provide understanding of official UK opinions of the US pertaining to its politics, economy, and society. In the future I will also be digitising articles from a number of newspapers, including the Daily Herald, a pro-Labour working class and trade-union newspaper and the liberal supporting News Chronicle to investigate their role in interpreting the United States to the British people. In sum, I feel extraordinarily lucky that I continue to learn whilst being paid.
The success of the project is dependent on getting people to be interviewed, getting them to recommend others and asking questions that will provide suitable data for academics and others to analyse. And this success is built on the foundations of the interviewer being a social person. I enjoy this project because it allows the social in me to come out to play. Because I consider myself a friendly, courteous and most importantly an interested person in other peoples’ stories, it makes this project not just work but fun. It validates the kind of person I want to be. Also, because we have over two years left to complete the project it means that the feedback from the interviewees and from the academic community and others analysing the first interviews will get a very real opportunity to impact the project’s path; questions will improve, as will my techniques. Dr Matthew Alan Hill
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Special Events Bicentennial Event
In December 2010 the Institute convened, in partnership with the Association of Cultural Attachés of Latin America, Spain and Portugal, a seminar on ‘Latin America’s Independence: Causes, Course and Consequences’. The goal of this half-day event was to reflect on aspects of Latin American independence movements in the early nineteenth century and their longer-term consequences for different countries’ economics, politics and society and for the region’s international engagement. Speakers included: Professor David Brading (University of Cambridge), ‘Religion in the Independence Era and Thereafter’; Dr Matthew Brown (University of Bristol),
‘Foreign Relations in Latin America during the Independence Era’; Professor Colin Lewis (London School of Economics and Political Science), ‘Independence, Economic Growth and the International Economy’; Professor Anthony McFarlane (University of Warwick), ‘War and the Genesis of Independence: Spanish America, 1810-1815’; Professor Nicola Miller (University College London), ‘Liberalism and Nationalism in Independent Latin America’; Dr Eduardo Posada-Carbó (University of Oxford), ‘Elections and Democracy in Independent Latin America’; Dr Natalia Sobrevilla (University of Kent), ‘Identity and Subaltern Actors in the Wars of Independence.’ The audience included a number of members of the Latin American diplomatic corps resident in London.
For more events see: http://americas.sas.ac.uk/events/
Latin American Trading Blocs: Between Reality and Utopia
Held in London in May 2011 with the generous support of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, this event was convened by Gian Luca Gardini (Bath) and Paulo Drinot (ISA). The event included presentations by several experts on trade blocs in the region, including Mahrukh Doctor (Hull) on Mercosur, John Crabtree (Oxford) on the Andean Community, Diego Sánchez-Ancochea (Oxford) on CAFTA, Thomas Muhr (Bristol) on ALBA-TCP, and Kenneth Shadlen (LSE) on US-Latin America Trade Agreements. A second panel featured contributions by distinguished members of the Latin America diplomatic community in London, HE Mauricio Rodríguez-Múnera, Ambassador of Colombia to the UK, HE Roberto Jaguaribe, Ambassador of Brazil to the UK, HE Maria Beatriz Souviron Crespo, Ambassador of Bolivia to the UK, and HE Pilar Soborio de Rocafort, Ambassador of Costa Rica to the UK, who reflected on their countries’ and the region’s experience of trade and other forms of integration. As Gardini noted in his introduction, four issues majorly affect trade in today’s Latin America: Firstly, Latin American countries are unable to reach a minimum common denominator of policy convergence on three fundamental points that highly affect trade strategies: the relationship with the US, the role of Brazil, and the development model to pursue. Secondly, regional integration projects that should underpin unity of intent in the area of trade in fact reproduce the heterogeneity of the current Latin American political and economic panorama, thus 18
generating fragmentation of efforts, dispersion of resources, overlapping membership and conflictive norms and goals. Thirdly, intra-regional trade may have reached a point beyond which it will be difficult to progress. Extraregional political and economic partners (China), aggregations (BRIC, G20), and multilateral forums (WTO) are becoming increasingly important to regional trade; emerging powers and China in particular seem to have a preference for bilateralism; structural asymmetries such as the presence of giant countries with ambiguous regional leadership credentials seem to hamper more than encourage regional cooperation. Overall, the rest of the world is more interested in what individual Latin American countries have to sell rather than what Latin America as a whole has to offer. Fourth, the resurgent emphasis on ideology of some Latin American administrations, the return of politics to centre stage almost in opposition to rather than in complementarity with economics, and the use of regional integration and its trade dimension as a fluctuating government tactic rather than a stable country strategy have politicised the issue of trade and made consensus about it even more problematic. As this suggests, and as the presentations by both academics and diplomats confirmed, integration in Latin America is far from straightforward. The challenges to regional integration are many but the opportunities that integration can produce are equally great. This event contributed to an ongoing and much needed conversation between scholars and policy makers. A report on the event will be published in the journal Integration and Trade shortly.
Responding to Climate Change in the Caribbean An international conference on ‘Responding to Climate Change in the Caribbean’ was held at London University on 13–14 June.* Climate change represents an enormous challenge to the Caribbean. The region, which has made only a minor contribution to the global problem, will be on the front line of the risk and damage it will cause. With more hurricanes and more erratic rainfall patterns, rising temperatures and sea levels, and higher costs of imported fuels, the region’s economy and environment are certain to suffer. The damage has the potential to plunge the region into permanent recession, with changing rainfall patterns causing ruin for small farmers, frequent floods destroying some towns, and coral reefs disappearing. An international conference held in June in London considered what needs to be done, who needs to be doing it and who should be paying for it. In his opening statement, Kenrick Leslie, Executive Director of the Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, not only highlighted the threats but also pointed out that the Caribbean was leading the way in pressing for climate justice (working with other Small Island Developing States, or SIDS) and developing a response strategy. A Regional Framework for Achieving Development Resilience to Climate Change (2009–2015), endorsed by Caribbean Community heads of government, encourages member states to adapt to reduce vulnerability by regulating land use, conserving energy, investing to improve resilient infrastructure and expanding forest resources. The framework also includes plans for the Caribbean to play a part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by developing renewable energy, improving energy efficiency and conserving standing forests. But more work is needed urgently. To determine where efforts must be focused, vulnerabilities and responses need to be identified. The conference heard about how climate change models are being refined and improved through international collaboration, to determine which areas will be hit hardest by rising sea levels, drought, storms and higher temperatures, and to estimate the probable cost of the damage. Local studies and information sharing at community level are also essential — to determine how livelihoods will be affected, to prepare people for the changes ahead and to develop strategies for resilience.
Researchers, and representatives of NGOs, presented work being done in these areas. Many of the most efficient solutions can be found by sharing expertise in traditional methods that both reduce the use of expensive imported inputs, and that benefit the environment. Technical and financial support needs to be directed to those at risk and to appropriate infrastructure projects. Capital projects — to minimise damage to both rural and urban areas, and to develop alternative energy sources — will need funding. The conference identified the need for new financing solutions, and heard about how these can involve small businesses, local governments, nongovernmental organisations, corporations and international official and private financing partners. It also highlighted the need for Caribbean policymakers not only to continue to play their part in international climate change negotiations but also to make sure that full advantage is taken of mechanisms for financing climate change adaptation, such as the clean development mechanism and reforestation programmes. The message from the conference was that in the face of the enormous threats posed by climate change, the Caribbean region needs to urgently mobilise its own capacity — for intelligence, creativity, collaboration and commitment — as well as securing the financial and technical support needed for adaptation. *The event was organised by the Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA, University of London) Centre for Caribbean and Latin American Research & Consultancy (CLARC, at London Metropolitan University); International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED); and Caribbean Studies Association Environment and Sustainability Group. It was sponsored by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), with additional support from the David Nicholls Memorial Trust; the British Caribbean Chamber of Commerce; the School of Advanced Study, University of London; and the Commonwealth Human Ecology Council. 19
Jornadas REDIAL/ACLAIIR: 20-21 June 2011 ISA and the British Library hosted a unique two-day conference, the Jornadas REDIAL/ACLAIIR, on 20-21 June this year. This was a joint event held by the UK’ s Hispanic Studies library group ACLAIIR (Advisory Council on Latin American and Iberian Information Resources) and one of its counterparts worldwide, REDIAL (Red Europea de Información y Documentación sobre América Latina). ACLAIIR is the oldest of the U.K.’S language study library groups, and its aim is to advance knowledge in its two fields of interest, Latin America and Iberia, by acting as a focus for Latin American and Iberian Studies in libraries of all kinds. Its activities include providing information on libraries’ holdings in Latin American and Iberian studies, and acting as a forum for discussion between librarians and users of Latin American & Iberian research materials. ACLAIIR members examine possibilities of cooperation between libraries, individuals and bodies with an interest in these materials, and collaborate with similar groups with an interest in information provision in these and other areas e.g. ACLAIIR holds workshops for PiLAS (Postgraduates in Latin American Studies), the next to be held at the British Library on 25 November 2011. REDIAL ( Red Europea de Información y Documentación sobre América Latina) is an association whose membership comprises 40+ libraries and documentation centres located in a wide range of European counties including Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K. (the U.K. being represented by ACLAIIR). Its aims are to act as a meeting platform to facilitate the development of communication and support between institutions working in the field of Latin American Studies (i.e. ISA’s European equivalents) and the exchange of information between researchers, librarians and archivists working in that field. The June event was the first time that the two groups had met in the U.K., and nearly all the proceedings were conducted in Spanish. The first day included introductions to two major commercial projects of interest to Latin Americanists , such as Digitalia and Gale’s World Scholar Latin American Portal. Both groups held their AGMs and enjoyed presentations on research projects on Latin America by leading U.K. academics. Claire Taylor of the University of Liverpool spoke on ‘Acercamientos a la cibercultura Latinoamericana’, Matthew Brown (Bristol) gave his presentation on ‘Enlaces británicos con América Latina en la era del Imperio. 20
Recursos electrónicos existentes y oportunidades para futuros proyectos’ and Aquiles AlencarBrayner (British Library) addressed the Endangered Archives Project -‘Proyecto “Archivos en Peligro”’. ISA hosted the evening events, which included an introduction to ISA by Professor Kevin Middlebrook, and a series of talks and presentations on Latin American visual culture, followed by a reception. Stephen Hart of UCL spoke on Gabriel García Márquez, Erica Segre (University of Cambridge) on Latin American visual culture, and finally, John Perivolaris spoke about his project ‘Retratos de Independencia: Bicentennial Portraits of Latin American Women in England’. The second day of the event was devoted to discussions of current and future projects for Latin American information provision. On Wednesday 22 June, a group of 20 librarians from the Red Europea sobre Información y Documentación sobre América Latina (REDIAL) visited Cambridge University Library. The visit started with 30-minute tours of the Library, followed by a visit to the Map Department, where a display of old maps and atlases from Spain and Latin America was on show. The group was then invited to view an informal display of rare books featuring beautifully illustrated items from the Waddleton Collection together with some of the Library’s rarest Hispanic holdings. The visit to the Library ended with a presentation by Sonia Morcillo, Hispanic Specialist, who talked about the Library’s Hispanic collections, with an emphasis on collection development, acquisition policies and special projects.
Alumni Updates Graduates are encouraged to keep in contact with the Alumni News Items Institute. The Institute has always flourished because it Guillaume Long who received a PhD from ISA this is a community that actively involves those who have year has just been named president of Ecuador’s been past students. newly created Council for Evaluation, Accreditation and Quality Assurance in Higher Education, the You can make and maintain contact by: principal regulatory authority in the higher-education sector with a mission to upgrade quality in Ecuadoran • Joining our newly launched facebook page: universities. www.facebook.com/pages/Institute-for-the-Study-of- Natascha Scott-Stokes graduated with an MA from ILAS in 1987. She now runs a guesthouse in Chile: the-Americas/175111945876820 www.chileapartment.blogspot.com • Signing up to our email mailing list. We will use this list to let you know about jobs in relevant areas, alumni Howard Cunnell graduated from ISA in 2005 with a activities, forthcoming events and publications, and PhD. Picador will publish his novel The Sea on Fire, in April 2012. newsletter. http://www.convilleandwalsh.com/index.php/titles/ • Sharing and celebrating your success stories and title/the-sea-on-fire/ activities (and publishing your photos) in this Laurence Wilkes, who graduated in 2009, joined the Foreign Office and in April will be moving to Madrid newsletter. to be Second Secretary Political in the Embassy there, • Attending seminars and conferences offered at the working on Spanish domestic politics. Institute - make sure you’re on the mailing list for Dr Cara Levey and Daniel Ozarow, alumni of the ISA the printed programme. teaching programme, are holding the following event We would like to ask that graduates let us know what in collaboration with Dr Paulo Drinot they are doing by registering as alumnus of the Institute Thursday 8th December 2011, 9am-6pm and its predecessors by completing an alumnus Crisis, Response and Recovery: A Decade on from the registration form or by emailing americas@sas.ac.uk Argentinazo 2001-2011 with their details. ISA, together with the Argentine Research Students Network (ARSN) and the Crises of Capitalism in the Americas Research Network (COCARN) will be staging a one-day conference to commemorate a decade since the social and economic crisis in Argentina. Bringing together scholars and professionals working on Argentina from a range of disciplines, participants will debate and discuss short and long-term response to crisis and subsequent trajectories of recovery. The event will take place in The Court Room (South Block of Senate House, First Floor) and the keynote speaker is Dr Maristella Svampa (Researcher at CONICET, Argentina and Professor at the Universidad Nacional de la Plata). If you are interested in attending, please complete the Registration form by 25th November 2011. This and further details can be found at http:// americas.sas.ac.uk/events/eventdetails.html?id=9714 Any queries should be directed to Conveners Dr Cara Levey, Daniel Ozarow and Dr Paulo Drinot at argentinaconference2011@gmail.com 21
Giving to ISA Donate to ISA and help us train the scholars of the future It is now possible to make charitable donations to ISA to help us expand our role in the study of the Americas, both north and south. Your support can enable the Institute’s students to undertake study and research that might otherwise have been impossible. We particularly focus on two areas:
• Bursaries for students with strong academic backgrounds who might otherwise be unable to study for financial reasons • Fieldwork grants for students to conduct primary research in the Americas
Babak Farrahi outside the Federal Institute in Mexico City
Decisions to support students are made by a panel of academic staff of the Institute, on academic merit, to those in need. By contributing in this way, you will build on nearly half a century of our work studying the Americas, and support the next generation of researchers. Reports from the recipients of grants will be made available, demonstrating the impact and value of your donation in nurturing young scholars in the first stages of their careers. Even small gifts can add up to make a real difference to a student’s ability to study, so we welcome your contribution and thank you for your help. Note: UK taxpayers can add 25% to the value of donations by making a Gift Aid declaration please see our website http://americas.sas.ac.uk/about-us/donations.html for full details of how to donate
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