Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies | College of Liberal Arts
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Faculty Research Awards

LLILAS supports the scholarly excellence of UT Latin Americanists by providing funding to our faculty affiliates to conduct field research in Latin America and the Caribbean. Proposals are assessed by a faculty committee appointed by the director each spring semester. Awardees receive full or partial travel funding.

2024 Faculty Seed Grant Recipients


The goal of the LLILAS Seed Grant Initiative is to foster a vibrant research ecosystem that propels the field of Latin American Studies forward and serves as a crucible for innovative thought and impactful scholarship. The Seed Grant provides the essential initial funding for faculty and graduate students to explore cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research questions. By supporting the early stages of research, this grant catalyzes faculty and students to formulate rigorous, well-developed projects that are strong candidates for future external funding.

Research Seed Grants

Javier Auyero, Sociology

Things That Work: A Comparative Study of Contentious Politics-based Initiatives in Marginalized Communities

In many marginalized neighborhoods throughout Latin America, residents are participating in community organizations that seek to make their daily life more “livable.” From soup-kitchens and agroecological gardens to women’s “collectives” against interpersonal violence or groups fighting environmental contamination, the relational dynamics of these grassroots community initiatives are not well known. What are the mechanisms and processes that foster grassroots “success”? This project is an exploratory study of six community initiatives that, born from contentious collective action, have been able to persist in time and have contributed to a “better life” for the community where they took root. 

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Raissa Fabregas, LBJ School

Enhancing Parental Mental Health and Children’s Outcomes in High-Poverty Areas in Mexico through a Low-Cost Scalable Program

Nearly 775 million people in low- and middle-income countries experience a mental disorder. In Latin America, the prevalence of mental health disorders is estimated to be around 15%. Mental disorders inflict suffering upon those who endure them and may also decrease employment, income, and investments, leading to poverty. Parental depression also correlates with impaired child development. While the magnitude of the problem is evident, there is a notable shortfall in the provision of necessary treatments. In Latin America, less than 2% of the health care budget is allocated to mental health, and the treatment gap in the region is estimated at 75%. We seek funding to support a pilot to inform a large-scale field experiment in Mexico. The large-scale project will investigate whether a low-cost, scalable mental health program targeting low-income parents in Ecatepec, Mexico, improves their mental health, well-being, and labor market outcomes, benefits children’s well-being, educational and socio emotional outcomes, and through which channels these effects may occur.

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Carlos Ramos-Scharrón, Geography & Environment / LLILAS

Water Access Challenges and Possibilities for Rural Communities in Mexico’s Volcanic Belt: The Case of San Isidro Canoas Altas in Estado de Puebla

This project will bring together an interdisciplinary team of UT faculty and students with collaborators both in the US and Mexico to engage with a project that addresses one of the most important environmental and societal challenges of the 21st century. The proposed project is meant to address water scarcity in San Isidro Canoas Altas, a rural community on the western slopes of the Pico de Orizaba volcano in Mexico. The two team members of the project have experience working in the community and are familiarized with the severe water-related challenges community members face. Using the expertise and lived experiences of project members and collaborators, the team will examine the water system that provides sustenance to San Isidro Canoas Altas, which due to the combined challenges imposed by climate change and lack of access to technologies and political leverage struggles to find solutions to its water problem. The team will conduct in-depth interviews with community members and will perform both qualitative and quantitative analyses of water resources and the existing infrastructure. Findings from this preliminary seed grant will be used as the foundation for larger awards that will seek to find sustainable solutions to the growing problems of water supply in San Isidro Canoas Altas and the region.

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Sandro Sessarego, Spanish & Portuguese

Minority Languages and Linguistic Human Rights in Latin America: Strategies to Revitalize Afro-Bolivian Spanish 
Shared with graduate student Paula Jiménez

Examining language rights through linguistic, social, and legal lenses, this project presents a unified methodology to generate fresh theoretical perspectives into language policy, minority groups and systemic inequality. In particular, it aims at examining the status of unofficial languages in Latin America to understand how language policy may have a social impact on ethnic and racial minorities with a focus on speakers of Afro-Bolivian Spanish. This project critically reviews the process Afro-Bolivian Spanish is going through to acquire visibility, recognition and, potentially, a new role in education. This seed grant will yield several peer-reviewed publications, a PhD dissertation, and the development of two grant proposals. Additionally, a portion of the gathered video and audio materials will be utilized in crafting the first online, open-access Atlas of Afro-Hispanic Languages, thus spotlighting and acknowledging Bolivia's African heritage.

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Community Engagement Seed Grants

Octavio Kano-Galván, Moody College

Grasshopper Consumption for Sustainable Nutrition and Community Well-Being (shared with Boris Corredor)

In Mexico, the consumption of insects, such as grasshoppers, is an ancestral tradition. From the point of view of nutrition, insects are an alternative food source due to their high protein value. Today, the increasing flow of goods, including food products, in global markets is changing dietary habits. Rural communities in Oaxaca, Mexico that produce, process, and sell insects are affected not only in terms of their food habits, but also with respect to their modes of subsistence. The aim of this project is to collaborate with three communities in the state of Oaxaca to document the production, consumption, and local trade of the grasshopper, so that the community members can widen their markets and promote the consumption of grasshoppers beyond their region. For this purpose, the project will also entail the development of a cookbook, accompanied by a comprehensive culinary guide, and a proposal for an advertising campaign to be launched in Austin, Texas, and Barcelona, Spain. The campaign’s proposal discusses ways to combat Western entomophobia by highlighting issues of taste, food justice, environmental sustainability, and public health. We anticipate that this project will enrich LLILAS’s mission to establish horizontal relations with Latin American communities in the age of planetary awareness. 

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Boris Corredor, Spanish & Portuguese

Grasshopper Consumption for Sustainable Nutrition and Community Well-Being (shared with Octavio Kano-Galván; see above)

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Robin Moore, Butler School of Music

Seminar on Ecocultural Knowledge of the Huasteca / Seminario de Saberes Culturales-Ecológicos de la Huasteca
Shared with graduate student J.A. Strub

In this four-day seminar, participants from the University of Texas at Austin and Mexico-based scholars and practitioners will engage in multidisciplinary workshops that highlight the interrelationship between ecology and culture (language, music, foodways, handcraft, spirituality, etc.) in the Huasteca region. The principal investigators of this project are Dr. Robin Moore, professor of ethnomusicology, and graduate student J.A. Strub. Dr. Moore is a national expert on higher-education curriculum reform and an advocate for interdisciplinary approaches to music studies, and he also has an extensive track record of promoting intercultural and transnational research initiatives. J.A. Strub is a graduate student in ethnomusicology and an advisee of Dr. Moore whose studies center around the music of the Huasteca region. He is also a current resident of Xalapa and is studying Nahuatl with the support of a FLAS grant. 

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Faculty Course Release Program

The purpose of the Faculty Course Release Program is to offer LLILAS affiliated facutly the opportunity to engage in research and/or creative intellectual projects by offering course release for either the fall or spring semester.

A faculty committee has selected the projects of Daniel Fridman (LLILAS/Sociology) and Robin Moore (Butler School of Music) for the 2023–24 Faculty Course Release. 

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Daniel Fridman, LLILAS and Department of Sociology
In his current research project, Fridman studies the role of money in therapeutic practices among Argentine psychologists. Through this lens, he examines everyday cultural uses of money in contemporary society and moral tensions around its role.

Fridman is author of Freedom from Work: Embracing Financial Self-Help in the United States and Argentina (2016), also available in Spanish as El sueño de vivir sin trabajar.

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Robin Moore, Butler School of Music
Moore's research project focuses on the growing and transforming role of violin performance, or toques de violín, in Afro-Cuban religious rituals. This is a virtually undocumented form of music-making.

Moore is author, most recently, of the book Danzón: Diálogos de música y baile por la cuenca del Caribe (2020, with Alejandro Madrid) and the book chapter "The Cuban Son, Race, and Transculturation" (2022), in The Cambridge Companion to Caribbean Music.

  • Summer 2023 Mellon Faculty Research Travel Grants

    An endowment from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provides funding for faculty to carry out summer research on topics focusing on Latin America. Meet the 2023 Mellon Travel Grant awardees.

    Paola Canova, LLILAS / Department of Anthropology
    Project title:
    Outlaw Cattle: Ranching and the Politics of Nature in the Paraguayan Chaco

    Héctor Domínguez Ruvalcaba, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
    Project title: The Diamond Man: Luis Barragán, Emotional Architecture and the Queerness of Mexican Modernity

    Daniel Fridman, LLILAS / Department of Sociology
    Project title: Money Transferences: The Payments for Psychotherapy in Argentina

    Kenneth Greene, Department of Government
    Project title:
    Political Accountability in Mexico 

    Kelly McDonough, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
    Project title:
    Native Justice and Land in Colonial Cholula

    Carlos Ramos-Scharrón, LLILAS / Department of Geography and the Environment
    Project title:
    Bathymetric Surveys of Key Water Reservoirs in Puerto Rico

    Sergio Romero, LLILAS / Department of Spanish and Portuguese
    Project title:
    Lenguas Generales and Spanish Colonialism: A Comparative Study of Quechua and Nahuatl 

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Mellon Faculty Research Travel Grants

An endowment from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provides funding for faculty to carry out summer research on topics focusing on Latin America. Meet the 2023 Mellon Travel Grant awardees.

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Paola Canova, LLILAS / Department of Anthropology

Project title: Outlaw Cattle: Ranching and the Politics of Nature in the Paraguayan Chaco

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Héctor Domínguez Ruvalcaba, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Project title: The Diamond Man: Luis Barragán, Emotional Architecture and the Queerness of Mexican Modernity
 

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Daniel Fridman, LLILAS / Department of Sociology

Project title: Money Transferences: The Payments for Psychotherapy in Argentina
 

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Kenneth Greene, Department of Government

Project title: Political Accountability in Mexico
 

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Kelly McDonough, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Project title: Native Justice and Land in Colonial Cholula
 

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Carlos Ramos-Scharrón, LLILAS / Department of Geography and the Environment

Project title: Bathymetric Surveys of Key Water Reservoirs in Puerto Rico
 

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Sergio Romero, LLILAS / Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Project title: Lenguas Generales and Spanish Colonialism: A Comparative Study of Quechua and Nahuatl
 

Translation Grant

This award supports the translation of books published in English by LLILAS affiliated faculty into Spanish or Portuguese. 

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Robin D. Moore, Butler School of Music
Moore has been awarded funds for translation into Spanish of his book Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba (University of California Press, 2006).

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Gabriela Polit, Department of Spanish & Portuguese
Professor Polit has been awarded funds for translation into Spanish of her book Unwanted Witnesses: Journalists and Conflict in Contemporary Latin America (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019).

  • Summer 2022 Mellon Research Travel Recipients

    Iyaxel Cojti Ren, Department of Anthropology traveled to Guatemala to conduct research for her project "K'iche' expansionism and the politics of the Maya highlands during the Postclassic period." This is a continuation of her research on the geopolitics of the Maya highlands during the Postclassic period (900–1524 CE), where she is reconstructing the political networks among various Postclassic political units. According to Cojti Ren, “the few investigations that have been carried out on the archaeology of the Maya highlands focus on the history and culture of single sites without considering their political and economic interactions at the regional level over time. This research would be the first attempt to apply the network theory in the Maya highlands from a diachronic approach. Network theory focuses on the use of networking techniques to explore aspects of regional connectivity over time.”

    Kenneth Greene, Department of Government: Under the heading of “Political Accountability in Mexico,” Greene will conduct fieldwork in Mexico to further work on two different research projects. The first is a book manuscript in progress about vote buying and the quality of democracy. Greene describes vote buying as a systemic attempt to “buy citizens’ votes” by offering “selective access to material benefits and services.” One of the questions he asks is, Is it effective? His second project, a newer one, examines political organization in Mexico’s 30,000-plus ejidos. “The degree of centralization or decentralization in ejidos governance impacts multiple aspects of rural life,” writes Greene, “including the distribution of resources among ejido residents, the quality of public services, feelings of community integration, and the ability to resist the incursion of outside actors ranging from clientelist political parties to criminal organizations. Surprisingly, there is as yet no social science research on the variation in ejido governance.”

    Gabriela Polit, Department of Spanish & Portuguese: Polit’s summer research concerns her project titled “Female Fantasies: Trauma and Drive in Difficult Times.” Citing sobering statistics about the high rate of femicide in Latin America, especially Mexico, Argentina, and Ecuador, Polit notes that women’s movements in these countries have achieved unparalleled strength. “Grief and drive, and trauma and activism, operate on a compass with a complex and intriguing aesthetic balance in women’s contemporary literary works,” writes Polit. She plans to look at a range of works by Latin American women authors, conduct interviews with the authors, and explore the specific contexts in which the works were created. In writing about the works in conversation with one another, Polit says she will pay special attention to “the rich intersections between fantasy and creativity; vulnerability and ethics; mourning and the construction of political selves; and syntax and the representation of fear.” 

  • 2022–23 Research Faculty Leave

    Faculty Research Leave

    The purpose of Faculty Research Leave is to provide LLILAS faculty with the opportunity to engage in productive and creative intellectual projects, otherwise impossible to achieve during the course of the academic year.

    Lina Del Castillo, LLILAS and Department of History
    Del Castillo conducted research during 2022–23 for her book project titled "Colombia’s Paper Empire: Cosmopolitanism, Print Culture, and Geopolitics in the Age of Revolution." This book traces how "Columbia," a poetic late-eighteenth-century name that set Anglo-America off from Britannia, came to evoke, by the turn of the century, a “Columbian” project to unite the entirety of the Western Hemisphere, which eventually morphed into the massive and short-lived Gran Colombian Republic from 1819 to 1830. The book follows the initial "Columbian" vision for North and South America as it migrated to Europe via cosmopolitan Spanish Americans only to return in the form of a Latinized continental "Colombia."

    Del Castillo was the faculty organizer of the 2022 Lozano Long Conference, “Archiving Objects of Knowledge with Latin American Perspectives.” She is the author of Crafting a Republic for the World: Scientific, Geographic, and Historiographic Inventions of Colombia (U of Nebraska Press, 2018).

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