VRPs

Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, an Argentine writer and public intellectual, is a leading figure in Latin American literature and a founder of the feminist movement #NiUnaMenos (“Not One Less”). Her novel Las aventuras de China Iron (translated as The Adventures of China Iron) was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker International Prize. During her visit to UT Austin, she will offer a workshop through the Spanish Creative Writing Initiative on the literary construction of nature. Her faculty sponsor is Professor Gabriela Polit of the Department of Spanish & Portuguese.

Socorro Venegas is an award-winning writer and editor whose recent publications include the novels Ceniza roja (2022), Vestido de novia (2014), and La noche será negra y blanca (2009), and the short story collection La memoria donde ardía (2019). Her works have been translated into English, French, and Portuguese. She has directed editorial projects for the Fondo de Cultura Económica, and, at UNAM, created the novel and memoir collection Vindictas, showcasing the work of marginalized Latin American women writers of the twentieth century. Venegas is a member of the honor committee of Centro para el Estudio de la Historia de la Lectura, directed by Alberto Manguel in Portugal, and director-general of publications and editorial development at UNAM. She writes the column Modo Avión for the literary e-magazine Literal Latin American Voices. Her faculty sponsor is Professor Gabriela Polit of the Department of Spanish & Portuguese.

Antonio Herman Benjamin is a justice on the Superior Tribunal de Justiça (National High Court) of Brazil. He was appointed to the court in 2006 by President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva. A global leader in the environmental law community, Justice Benjamin is the president of the Brazilian Environmental Forum of Judges, director of the LLM Program on Justice at the National Judicial Academy of Brazil (Escola Nacional de Formação e Aperfeiçoamento de Magistrados—ENFAM), chair emeritus of the World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL), president of the Global Judicial Institute on the Environment, and secretary-general of the International Advisory Council for Environmental Justice of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). He is also a member of the UN Secretary General Legal Expert Group on Crimes against the Environment, and for a decade Councilor of the Brazilian Environmental Council. He was visiting professor in environmental law at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law for seventeen years. He is a Goodwill Ambassador for Environmental Justice of the Organization of American States (OAS). In 2020, Brazilian scientists named after him a newly discovered species of orchid from the Amazon Rainforest: Bulbophyllum antoniobenjaminii. He earned his LL.B. from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, his LL.M. from the University of Illinois, and his PhD from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Justic Benjamin was invited by a group of six faculty members representing the Rapoport Center for Human Rights, the LLILAS Benson Brazil Center, and Planet Texas 2050.

Elba Coria Márquez is a Mexican attorney whose area of expertise includes protection of the human rights of migrants in Mexico and the Americas. She was director of the first law clinic for refugees at the Universidad Iberoamericana, where she advocated for alternatives to detention of unaccompanied migrant children in Mexico. She holds degrees from UNAM and the University of Dublin, Ireland. She was invited to campus by Professor Denise Gilman of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. 

Rossana Castiglioni is dean at the School of Social Science and Historia at Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile. She holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Notre Dame. Castiglioni is co-organizer of Red Latinoamericana de Análisis de la Política Social, PolSoc (www.polsoc.org). Her research interests include comparative social policy in Latin America and problems of democratic representation. Her campus visit was sponsored by Professor Raúl Madrid of the Department of Government. Read more here.

María Mercedes Di Virgilio, Universidad de Buenos Aires, was VRP in fall 2017. She studies habitat, spacial mobility, urban social policy, and urban poverty. She holds a doctorate in social sciences from Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). She is professor of research methodology at UBA and principal researcher for CONICET at Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani. Prior to being a VRP at LLILAS, she was visiting professor at the Doctoral and Master's Program in Architecture at Instituto de Geografía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Read more.

Sharlene Mollet, University of Toronto, was VRP in spring 2018. She is an associate professor cross-appointed with the Department of Human Geography, Centre for Critical Development Studies, and the Graduate Program in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. As a feminist political ecologist and cultural geographer, her work looks at forms of power shaping land conflicts in Latin America. More broadly, she studies how place-specific representations and meanings of race, gender, and sexuality shape the lives of Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, and campesinos, and their relations with each other, the state, and elites. Read more.

César Rodríguez-Garavito is executive director of the Center for Law, Justice, and Society (Dejusticia) and associate professor and founder of the Program on Global Justice and Human Rights at the University of the Andes (Colombia). He has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, Brown University, the University of Pretoria (South Africa), the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (Brazil), Central European University, the Åbo Academy of Human Rights (Finland), ITAM (Mexico) and the Andean University of Quito. Founding director of the Human Rights Lab, he also serves in the advisory boards of the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, OpenGlobalRights, the Global Center for Pluralism, and the Business and Human Rights Journal. He serves in the executive boards of WITNESS, Fundar México, and the Business and Human Rights Resource Center. He is a lead author in the International Panel on Social Progress and co-director of the Global School on Socioeconomic Rights. He writes a weekly op-ed for El Espectador. Rodríguez-Garavito holds PhD and MS (Sociology) degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, an MA from New York University’s Institute for Law and Society, an MA (Philosophy) from the National University of Colombia, and a JD from the University of the Andes. His publications include Radical Deprivation on Trial: The Impact of Judicial Activism on Socioeconomic Rights in the Global South (Cambridge University Press, 2015); Balancing Wealth and Health: the Battle over Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines in Latin America (Oxford University Press, 2014); and Social Rights Judgments and the Politics of Compliance: Making It Stick (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Juliana Martínez Franzoni conducts research on social policy formation and socioeconomic and gender inequality in Latin America. She has been a Fulbright scholar and a visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies (US), DesiguALdades.net (Germany), and CIEPP (Argentina). She is co-author, with Diego Sánchez-Anchochea, of The Quest for Universal Social Policy in the South: Actors, Ideas, and Architectures (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Most recently, her articles have appeared in Latin American Research Review (2014), ECLAC Review (2014), and Social Politics (2015). Martínez Franzoni is professor at the University of Costa Rica. She combines her academic work with policy advocacy and expert advice to governments and international organizations such as UN Women and the UN Development Program (UNDP).

Claudia Silva Dittborn is head of the Studies Section at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Immigration, Ministry of the Interior and Public Safety, Chile. Prior to taking on this position in January 2016, she was a professor in the Social Work Department at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Bonn in Germany (2011). She is a researcher and writer on the topic of migration, and the treatment of migrants in Chile.

Tomás Fernández Robaina is a graduate of the Technical Information and Library Science program at La Universidad de la Havana and a prolific author on Afro-Cuban issues. Since 1989, he has held the positions of researcher and professor at the Department of Cultural and Historical Research and Library Sciences at the National Library of Cuba, of which he has been an employee since 1962. He has published numerous bibliographies, including Bibliography of African American Studies (1968), Folk Magazines Index (1971), Bibliography of Cuban Bibliographies (1973), Bibliography of Afro-Cuban Themes (1986), Black in Cuba: Notes on the History of the Struggle Against Racial Discrimination 1902–1958 (1990), Cuba: Personalities in the Race Debate (2007), Afro-Cuban Identity: Culture and Nationality (2009), Black in Cuba: Colony, Republic, and Revolution (2012), and Notes on the History of the National Library (2001). He has also published the following works: Secret Memories of Two Public Women (1984), Santeros and Paleros Speak (1994), Histories of Public Women (1998), and Mass for an Angel (2010). He has taught courses and seminars in universities and institutions in the United States, Nigeria, Mexico, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Venezuela, Senegal, Colombia, Spain, and Germany.

Bianca Freire-Medeiros is Associate Professor in sociology at the Center for Research and Documentation on Brazilian Contemporary History (CPDOC) at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She was a research fellow at the Center for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe) at Lancaster University, UK. Dr. Freire-Medeiros has published widely on a range of subjects relevant to favela communities, such as social mobility, tourism, and favelas as media spectacles. Her book, Touring Poverty, published by Routledge in 2013, probes the material, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions of poverty tourism in city spaces, social interactions, and global imaginaries. The book’s sustained, careful ethnographies unpack the meanings, objects, bodies, and spatial practices that make up "the traveling favela," a mobile site for experiencing poverty and a global trademark. 

Juan Pablo Luna, a native of Montevideo, Uruguay, earned a PhD in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2006. In 2008, his dissertation was awarded the Juan Linz Award for the Best Doctoral Dissertation by the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association. Also in 2008, he was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by the Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, and was appointed as associate visiting professor at Princeton University. He currently coordinates the Chilean chapter of the LAPOP/AmericasBarometer Survey, run by Vanderbilt University. He has participated in research projects run by academic centers in Uruguay, Chile, Canada, Spain, and the U.S. His most recent works have appeared in Comparative Political Studies, Política y Gobierno, Revista de Ciencia Política, Latin American Politics and Society, International Political Science Review, Third World Quarterly, Journal of Latin American Studies, and the Journal of Democracy. In 2010, along with Herbert Kitschelt, Kirk Hawkins, Guillermo Rosas, and Elizabeth Zechmeister, he published the book Latin American Party Systems (Cambridge University Press). His research interests include the analysis of political parties and party systems, the nature of political representation, the political effects of social and economic inequality, the nature of state institutions, and the mixed-methods approach to research in political science.

Cássio M. Turra is an associate professor of demography in the Department of Demography/Cedeplar at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on demographic methods, population issues, and economic demography. After earning his PhD in demography from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004, Turra spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Office of Population Research and the Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University. Turra’s research encompasses many aspects of aging, including the relationships between life challenges, social economic environment, health, and mortality in older populations. In 2012, Turra was elected  president of the Brazilian Association for Population.

Cristian Alarcón is a Chilean journalist and editor at the Universidad Nacional de General San Martín (UNSAM) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is a fellow of the Foundation of New Latin American Journalism, based in Cartagena, Colombia, and is currently the academic director of a program on “The Drugs Trade, the City, and Violence in Latin America,” set up for journalists by the Foundation and the Open Society Institute. For ten years he wrote about urban violence and conflict in Sociedad y Cultura published in TXT Magazine, Gatopardo, Rolling Stone, and the newspaper Crítica de la Argentina. He is also author of the widely celebrated Si mequerés queréme transa (Norma, 2010). While at UT, he will be affiliated with the Department of Sociology and the School of Law.

David Altman has taught at the Instituto de Ciencia Política at the Universidad Católica in Santiago after earning his PhD at the University of Notre Dame. He recently published Direct Democracy Worldwide with Cambridge University Press. He has two current research projects, one focusing on political parties in Latin America, especially the Chilean and Uruguayan party systems, and the other focusing on the analysis of the Chilean transition to democracy during the 1980s. Dr. Altman will be affiliated with the Department of Government during his time at UT.

Regina Horta Duarte is Professor of History at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil. She was a Directive Board member of the Sociedad Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Historia Ambiental (SOLCHA). She is currently editor in chief of the Historia Ambiental Latinoamericana y Caribeña (HALAC). Professor Duarte is also a Consecutive Board member of both Clio (Recife) and História, Ciencias, Saúde-Manguinhos.

Miguel Sarre has been Professor of Law at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in Mexico City since 1997 and is director of the Center for Public Law at ITAM. He is currently a member of the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. His research focuses on human rights and intersections of international human rights law with public security and criminal justice issues. His current project involves management analysis of the National Commission of Human Rights. Professor Sarre is a representative for the academic sector on the Secretaría del Consejo de Coordinación para la Implementación del Sistema de Justicia Penal (SETEC), which oversees the Mexican criminal justice reforms that were passed in 2008. During his time at UT, he will be affiliated with the School of Law and the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice.

Jorge Contesse Singh is Assisant Professor and Director of the Center for Human Rights at the Universidad Diego Portales (UDP) in Chile. His research focuses on human rights and indigenous issues, especially the relationship between the Mapuche and the Chilean state. Dr. Singh’s recent publications include “Universally Speaking? The Cultural Challenge to Rights and Constitutionalism” in Revista Jurídica de la Universidad de Puerto Rico and "‘It’s Not OK’: New Zealand’s Efforts to Eliminate Violence against Women” (with J. Fenrich) in the Fordham International Law Journal. Professor Singh received his LLM from Yale Law School and is also the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship and the Presidente de la República Scholarship from the government of Chile. While at UT he will be affiliated with the School of Law.

Christian Spencer Espinosa is a social historian and musicologist and recently completed a double PhD in history and music sciences from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and the Universidad Nova de Lisboa. He is a scholar of the popular traditions of Chile and Chilean cueca music and has been published in journals such as TRANS – Revista Transcultural, the Boletín de Música de Casa de las Américas, and Cuadernos de Música Iberoamericana. Dr. Spencer Espinosa also has been a visiting researcher at the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Popular Music. He will be affiliated with the School of Music during his time at UT.

Ricardo Grau is Associate Professor of Landscape Ecology and Director of the Remote Sensing Laboratory at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán (UNT) in Argentina, and an Independent Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET). His research focuses on climate change, processes of urbanization, and land use in Latin America. His publications include La Naturaleza y el Hombre en las Selvas de Montaña (with A. D. Brown) and “Fire-mediated Forests Encroachment in Response to Climactic and Land Use Change in Subtropical Torests” in Ecosystems. Dr. Grau earned his PhD in geography from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he was also a Fulbright Scholar. During his time at UT, he will be affiliated with the Department of Geography and the Environment.

Hugo Mondragón is Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Professor Mondragón’s research focuses on how the national images of Chile, Colombia, and Brazil have been shaped by modern architecture. His recent publications include “El Paisaje como construcción de sentido: El Valle de Putaendo” in Habitar el Patrimonio and Arquitectura y Construcción: Chile 1945–1950 (with A. Tellez). Dr. Mondragón obtained a master’s in architectural history from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and a doctorate in architecture and urban studies from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. While here he will be affiliated with the School of Architecture.

Catalina Smulovitz is Professor and Director of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Argentina, and is also an Associate Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET).  She is a leading scholar in political science, particularly in areas of social accountability and judicial mobilization. Her recent publications include “Judicialization in Argentina: Legal Culture or Opportunities and Support Structures?” in Legal Cultures and Political Activism in Latin America and Enforcing the Rule of Law: Citizens and the Media in Latin America (with E. Peruzzotti). Dr. Smulovitz earned her MA and PhD in political science from Pennsylvania State University. She will be affiliated with the Department of Government while here at UT.

Claudia Briones is Professor and Director of the Graduate and Postgraduate Program in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the National University of Rio Negro (UNRN) in Argentina. She is also coordinator of the Anthropological Science degree program, and is a senior researcher at the National Council for Scientific Research. Briones is a leading scholar in anthropology and indigenous studies in Argentina and has researched and written widely on the Mapuche Indians in Chile and Argentina, specifically in the context of cultural politics and communal identity. Her recent publications include The “Conquest of the Desert” as Trope and Enactment of Argentina’s Manifest Destiny (with W. Delrio); Argentina: Contagious Marginalities (with Rosana Guber); and Our Struggle Has Just Begun: Experiences of Belonging and Mapuche Formations of Self. Dr. Briones earned her doctorate in anthropology from the University of Texas, where she was a Fulbright Commission Argentina Doctoral Fellow.

Carlos Costa-Ribeiro is Professor of Sociology at the University Research Institute of Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ), where he is also Director of the Center for the Study of Wealth and Social Stratification. Professor Costa-Ribeiro’s research focuses on social mobility and stratification with an emphasis on class, race, and inequality in Latin America, particularly in Brazil. His publications include Educational and Racial Assortative Mating in Brazil (1960–2000); Desigualdade de oportunidades no Brasil; Class, Race and Social Mobility in Brazil; and Social Mobility Trends and Education in Brazil. Professor Costa-Ribeiro obtained his master’s and doctoral degrees from Columbia University and completed his postdoctoral studies at Stanford University, where he was a recipient of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences Fellowship.

Lucio R. Renno is Director and Associate Professor in the Research Center and Graduate Program on the Americas at the University of Brasília. His research focuses on politics and governance in Latin America, particularly Brazil. Most recently his studies have focused on political crises in Latin America and the effects these have on citizens’ views of democracy and democratic institutions. Professor Renno received his master’s degree in political science from the University of Brasília and his doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh. His most recent publications include Split Ticket Voting as the Rule: Voters and Permanent Divided Government in Brazil (with Barry Ames and Andy Baker), Rewarding the Corrupt? Reelection and Scandal Involvement in the Brazilian 2006 Legislative Election, and Agenda Power, Executive Decree Authority, and the Mixed Results of Reform in the Brazilian Congress (with Carlos Pereira and Timothy Power).

Paola Bergallo is Professor at the Universidad de San Andrés in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her research interests center on feminist critiques of the law, socio-legal theory, and constitutional and human rights issues. In addition to an LLB with honors from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, she holds a Master of Law degree from Columbia University and a Master in Legal Research from Stanford University, where she is a JSD candidate. Professor Bergallo has held fellowships at the Hewlett Foundation and Stanford and has been Professor of Law at the University of Palermo and the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Her most recent publications include “Género y Trabajo” (with Natalia Gherardi) in La Mirada de los Jueces and “Equidad de Género: Perspectivas para su Exigibilidad Judicial” in La Aplicación de los Tratados de Derechos Humanos en el Ambito Local (Victor Abramovich, Alberto Bobino, and Christian Courtis, eds.).

Demetrio Cojtí is one of the most prominent Mayan intellectuals in Guatemala and currently serves as an educational expert for the European Youth Commission. He has worked as a consultant on the construction of programs for the benefit of indigenous groups for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Organization for American States (OAS), and the European Union, and was appointed Vice Minister of Education in 2000. He earned his doctorate from the University of Louvain, Belgium, and has written a series of influential articles and books that criticize the neocolonial structures of Guatemalan national society. Dr. Cojtí also has published on the complexity of a Guatemalan national identity, indigenous rights, and the political implications of linguistic research on Mayan languages. His most recent publications include El movimiento maya en Guatemala, Nuevas Perspectivas para la Construcción del Estado Multinacional, and El Proceso de Mayanización y el Papel de la Educación Escolar.

Fernando García Serrano is a longtime professor and investigator for the Anthropology Department at FLACSO (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencia Sociales) in Quito, Ecuador. His work focuses on ethnic diversity and inequality in Latin America, and he is especially interested in the development of cultural processes and symbols that exclude indigenous groups from the rest of society. Professor García Serrano earned his master’s in anthropology from the Universidad Iberoamericana de México. He has worked as a consultant for international organizations that focus on development and indigenous rights and has done extensive research for various government agencies and nonprofit organizations. His recent publications include Estado de la relación entre justicia indígena y justicia estatal en Ecuador, Linchamientos: Justicia por mano propia o justicia indígena?, and El trabajo infantial indigena: Algunas reflexiones.

Carlos de la Torre has a Ph.D. in sociology from the New School of Social Science Research. He currently teaches at FLACSO Ecuador and is spending the 2008–2009 academic year as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the author of five books and dozens of articles and book chapters, most of which focus on two main research areas: populism and populist movements in Latin America, and racism and ethnic/racial movements in Ecuador. Professor de la Torre’s work on Latin American populism “The Ambiguous Meanings of Latin American Populism” was an eye-opening piece that strongly influenced many analysts of neopopulism.

Frederico Holanda is Professor of Urbanism at the University of Brasília and the leading Brazilian expert on the city’s contemporary urban fabric. Holanda’s work focuses on how the current morphology of the city (the Plano Piloto and the satellite towns) is indicative of deep transformations of and departures from Lucio Costa’s plan of 1956.

Cecilia Medina is President of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and Co-director of the Centro de Derechos Humanos at the University of Chile in Santiago, where she studied legal and social sciences. She earned her doctorate in law at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. She also has taught at Lund University, the International Institute of Human Rights, the University of Toronto, the United Nations University for Peace, the University of Utrecht, and Harvard University, and has published extensively on human rights issues. In 2004, Medina was elected to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and served as its vice president in 2007. In 2008, she became the first woman president of the court. From 1995 to 2002, she was a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, including a period as its chair in 1999–2000. In 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Council selected her for the group of independent experts assigned to investigate the November 2006 Beit Hanoun incident. Cecilia Medina has served as a judge for the Rapoport Center’s Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on the Human Rights of Women.

Eduardo Restrepo is Professor of Anthropology at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Antioquia and his master’s degree from the University of North Carolina, where he shortly will receive his Ph.D. in anthropology with an emphasis in cultural studies. Professor Restrepo is a leading thinker in cultural studies in Colombia and has researched and written extensively on Afro-descendant social movements and cultural identity in Colombia, particularly in the Pacific Basin region. His work, especially on the history of Ley 70 (the 1993 law granting Afro-descendants the right to petition for collective land rights) and the formation of Afro identity in Colombia, is critical and at times controversial. Yet he engages closely with Afro-descendant social movements in his work, and is well respected by both activists and academics. Restrepo has received numerous awards and scholarships for his scholarly work, including a research grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Honigmann Award from the University of North Carolina, first place in the National Prize of Greiff Otto in Social and Economic Sciences, and Best Student Research from the University of Antioquia.

Rosemeire Moreira holds a B.A. in music from the Universidade Estadual Paulista de São Paulo (UNESP) and an M.A. in voice from the Royal Academy of Music in London. She is an accomplished soprano and soloist at the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo, where she has performed, among other pieces, L’Orfeo by Monteverdi and Requiem and Motet Te Christe Solum Novimus by José Mauricio Nunes Garcia. She also has performed in England, France, and The Netherlands. Rosemeire Moreira was recipient of the first prize for the “Concurso de Interpretação da Canção de Câmara Brasileira” promoted by the Centro de Música Brasileira and Rotary Club of São Paulo.

Mônica Herz is Associate Professor at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. She was the Director of the Institute of International Relations from 2004–2008 and has been President of the Brazilian Association of International Relations since 2007. Dr. Herz has a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science and has written two books: Organizações internacionais: Histórias e práticas with Andréa Ribeiro Hoffman (Rio de Janeiro: Elsevier, 2004) and Ecuador vs. Peru: Peacemaking Amid Rivalry with João Pontes Nogueira (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002). In addition, she also has written several articles and chapters on Latin American security and Brazilian foreign policy and international relations theory.

Ana Romaniuk holds a B.A. in fine Arts from the Universidad de Buenos Aires. She is a musicologist and ethnomusicologist based at the Conservatorio Superior de Música Manuel Falla and the Conservatorio Nacional de Música de Buenos Aires. A specialist in Argentinean folk traditions of the country’s northwestern region, she has focused her recent work on the relationship between music, popular religiosity, and social action in indigenous communities within the province of Salta. She also does research on the production and dissemination of folk music within the province of La Pampa. In addition, Professor Romaniuk’s work focuseson issues of folklorization, state intervention in musical representation, and counterhegemonic versions of nationalism.

Eduardo Viola has a doctorate in political science from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and has been Full Professor at the Institute of International Relations, University of Brasilia, since 1993. He has published three books and more than sixty journal articles on issues of globalization and governance, democracy and democratization in South America, environmental policy in Brazil, and global and South American politics of climate change. Dr. Viola has been an adviser to the Brazilian Ministries of Science and Technology, Education, and Environment and a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Human Dimension of Global Environmental Change Program (Bonn). He is currently a member of the Committee on Global Environmental Change of the Brazilian Academy of Science and member of the Board of Brazilian Association for Leadership Development (LEAD). He is also is associated with the Brazilian Center of International Relations (CEBRI). Dr. Viola is interviewed frequently by the Brazilian media on issues of international relations and the politics of global climate change.

Marina Alonso Bolaños is an ethnologist and historian affiliated with the Fonoteca of Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH). She has specialized in various issues related to indigenous peoples of Mexico, including cosmology, social organization, and territory, but her particular focus has been on musical practices. Dr. Bolaños has been a Visiting Scholar at the Universidad de la República de Uruguay. She has edited a number of important records issued by INAH and has overseen the production of several recording series focusing on traditional music of Mexico. Dr. Bolaños also has done extensive research on anthropological and historical issues on Chiapas since 1989.

Juan de la Rivas Sanz received his Ph.D. in 1988 from the University of Navarra, Spain. He is Professor of Planning and Urban Design at the Universidad de Valladolid, Spain, where he was previously Director of the Instituto Universitario de Urbanística. Dr. de la Rivas Sanz has been a Visiting Professor at the Politecnico de Milano, Italy, and Arizona State University. He also has taught at the Universidad de Guadalajara, the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas of the UNAM in México City, and the Instituto Superior Politécnico José Antonio Echeverría in Cuba.

Roberto Gargarella holds graduate degrees in law and sociology from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, an M.A. in political science from the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), a J.D. and LLM from the University of Chicago, and has conducted postdoctoral research at Balliol College, Oxford. Dr. Gargarella is Professor of Constitutional Theory and Political Philosophy at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. He has published extensively in English and Spanish on constitutional and democratic law and theory, with a special focus on economic and social rights. He has received numerous awards and scholarships, including a Tinker Scholarship, a Fulbright Scholarship, and a Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship.

Fernando Groisman received his Ph.D. from the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLASCO Argentina) and his M.A. in social science with a concentration in macroeconomy from the Universidad de Buenos Aires. A member of the Argentinean government scientific and technical council, he is attached to the Universidad Nacional General Sarmiento in Buenos Aires. Dr. Groisman has served as President of the Asociación Argentina de Especialistas de Estudios del Trabajo and is a successful consultant on issues related to labor market, income distribution, and social policy.

Elizabeth Kornfeld is Chile’s leading human rights psychologist and Director of the Center of Ethics at the Universidad Jesuita Alberto Hurtado in Santiago. She is author and coauthor of numerous books and articles on political reconciliation and on memory therapy of victims of human rights violations. During 1999–2000, she served on the Mesa de Diálogo convened by Chile’s Minister of Defense in the aftermath of Pinochet’s arrest, and she recently served on the Valech Commission on Torture in Chile. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including LASA’s Premio Martín Diskin Award.

Covadonga Meseguer received her Ph.D. in 2002 from the Center for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences at the Instituto Juan March, Spain. She is currently a Research Professor in the Department of International Studies at CIDE-Mexico. Dr. Meseguer is regarded as one of the most outstanding analysts of the cross-national diffusion of institutional and policy innovations. She has been a Visiting Professor in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain; a Visiting Fellow at the Kellog Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana; and a Jean Monnet Fellow at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute, Italy. Dr. Meseguer has a forthcoming book from Cambridge University Press entitled Learning, Policy Making, and Market Reforms.

Licia Valladares received her Ph.D. in 1974 from the University of Toulouse-le Mirail. An internationally renowed Brazilian sociologist, she was a senior researcher at the IUPERJ in Río de Janeiro and currently teaches at the University of Lille, France. Dr. Valladares has worked extensively on urban issues and is one of the leading authorities on favelas and urban informality in Brazil. She has been the project leader for Brazil and Venezuela of GURI (Global Urban Research Initiative), a project financed by the Ford Foundation and the World Bank. Dr. Valladares also has been Vice-President of the RC 21 (Sociology of Urban and Regional Research) of the International Sociological Association, Corresponding Editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and an invited Fellow at Fitzwilliam College at Cambridge.

Claudia Agostoni received her Ph.D. in 1997 from the University of London and is a researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM), in Mexico City. Her research interests include the social and cultural history of medicine and public health during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Mexico and in Latin America more generally. In 2005, Dr Agostoni received the Mexican Academy of Science Annual Award for research in the Humanities. Dr Agostoni was a visiting scholar at the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine of the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland (2003-2004), at the Universidad General Sarmiento, Buenos Aires, Argentina (September 2002), and at the Center for Latin American Cultural Studies, King’s College London, University of London (April-May 2002). She has gained an impressive reputation at an international level as an innovative and creative scholar.

Patricia Ravelo Blancas is a Professor at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropolog’a Social and currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, with a specialization in gender studies from El Colegio de México. Her current research project is "Protestal social y acciones colectivas en torno de la violencia sexual y de género en Ciudad Juárez, Chih./El Paso, TX."

Martha de Ulhôa, an ethnomusicologist affiliated with the Instituto Villa-Lobos at the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, is a renowned scholar of Brazilian popular music.  She has served on the editorial board of Popular Music, the field’s leading journal, and she is currently a Member-at-Large of the Executive Committee of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music.  She has published widely in Latin America, the United States, and Europe, on Brazilian topics ranging from MPB to B-Rock to música sertaneja, and on other topics ranging from matters of prosody in Monteverdi’s operas to the history of Chilean pop.  As a researcher whose work grapples with issues of class, gender, and public culture, her record of publication shows a commitment to dialogue across regional and disciplinary boundaries.