Keywords: Juan Luis Martínez, Visual Poetry, Pinochet’s Dictatorship, Artist’s book, Deleuzian-Guattarian Aesthetics

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Alejandro Veiga-Exposito

Alejandro Veiga-Exposito is a first year PhD student in the Hispanic Studies Department. His thesis’ provisional title is Poetics of Crisis: Enigmatic Realities in Spanish and Venezuelan Contemporary Literature, and his supervisors are Professor Alison Ribeiro de Menezes and Dr Fabienne Viala. Ricardo’s thesis will analyse how short-fiction, flash-fiction, and poetry authors are addressing the crisis in both Venezuela and Spain. He has also worked in British and North American contemporary theatre and poetry. Ricardo haa published articles and book chapters in these areas using interdisciplinary approaches, articulating different disciplines such as philosophy of language, aesthetics and politics, postcolonialism, race and gender studies, and psychoanalysis.

Keywords: aesthetics and politics, Spanish and Latin American contemporary literature, critical and cultural theory, Venezuela, Spain

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Giulia Champion 

Giulia Champion's research looks at literature from former British, French, Portuguese and Spanish colonies in most of the Caribbean and Latin America, as well as parts of Africa, which aims to challenge "colonial histories" through adapting canonical cultural productions through the use of the technique of “literary cannibalism”. This is done by displacing cannibalism as an act of savagery projected onto former colonial people to its use to identify and expose the consumption and exploitation of people and land by European and North American colonial and imperial powers. Giulia’s research focuses on postcolonial environmental studies and decolonial theory.

Keywords: Cannibalism, Brazilian Modernism, Mexico, the Caribbean, Colonial and Violent Histories, Capitalism and Economy Imaginaries, World-Ecology

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Richard Aldrich

Richard Aldrich's area studies training was originally South-east Asia. Currently Richard is working on a book on the CIA and Latin America with Zakia Shiraz (who was a research fellow here at Warwick). He is also working on a grant bid on hostages, kidnapping and ransoms with latin american case studies. Richard's own current work on the CIA and journalism involves work on Cuba in the 1960s.

Keywords: Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, CIA, journalism, hostages, embassy seizures, security sector reform

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Sofia Mercader

Sofia Mercader’s research interests are twentieth-century Argentine and Latin American literature, politics and culture, magazines and intellectual networks. Her PhD thesis examines the recent history of Argentina’s cultural and political development through the perspective of intellectuals. In particular, it focuses on the trajectory of the intellectual cohort grouped around the magazine Punto de Vista (1978-2008), one of the most influential cultural publications of the late twentieth century, in Argentina and Latin America. Sofia argues in her research that this group of intellectuals played a key role in the 1983 democratic transition, both in the restoration of the cultural and intellectual fields, and in the interpretation and reconstruction of a rather traumatic past. Either engaged to the post-dictatorship government as advisors of President Raúl Alfonsín, or as critical supporters, the intellectuals from Punto de Vista established the dominant discourse of the 1980s in Argentina, which strongly endorsed democracy and opposed the authoritarian discourses of the military and right-wing political parties.

Sofia is currently working on an article about the work of Ricardo Piglia, an Argentine writer who was originally a main editor of Punto de Vista. His recently published The Diaries of Emilio Renziare a relevant testimony of the 1960s and 1970s Argentina and an excellent literary piece.

Keywords: Argentina, Punto de Vista, political magazines, Latin American literature

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Michela Coletta

Michela Coletta (PhD in Latin American History, UCL) is a Teaching Fellow in Hispanic Studies at the University of Warwick and Associate Fellow of ILAS, University of London. Michela's research has focused on Latin American modernity since the nineteenth century, and increasingly on Latin American critiques of modernity especially within the environmental humanities. Michela is also editor of Warwick Hispanic Research.

Keywords: Latinidad, global environmental governance, Bolivia, politics of the environment, environmental humanities

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Mike Geddes

Mike Geddes is currently an Associate in the Department of History, University of Warwick. His academic background is in history and geography (BA Southampton) and urban and regional studies (PhD Sussex). From 1989 to 2008 Mike was Senior Research Fellow, Reader and Professorial Fellow in the Local Government Centre, Warwick Business School. His research spanned a range of issues in local politics and public policy, with particular interests in theories of the state and cross-national comparative analysis of patterns of local governance under neoliberalism. Mike's interest in cross-national comparative analysis led to his current research focus on aspects of politics and policy in those Latin American countries with more progressive political regimes, especially Bolivia. Specific research topics include radical initiatives in local politics and governance; political and policy programmes which claim to challenge the hegemony of neoliberalism; and projects to ‘refound’ the neo-colonialist and neoliberal state. His work includes a forthcoming co-edited book on Latin American Marxisms which ranges across.the 20^thand 21^stcenturies.

Keywords: Bolivia, local politics and public policy, Latin American Marxisms, neoliberalism and local governance

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Liana Beatrice Valerio

Liana Beatrice Valerio is in the final year of her PhD in History. Her work examines the comparative emotional worlds of elite slaveholders in South Carolina and Cuba, 1820 – 1850, and the contrasting ‘genres’ of slaveholding each presented in writing when discussing their experiences of mastery to various audiences. The thesis questions the manner in which the social expectations of masculine behaviour observed in each region created an environment of emotional freedom, or strangulation, as well as exploring how the antithetical statuses of increasingly secessionist South Carolina, and ‘ever faithful’ Spanish colony Cuba, affected the words used by elite slaveholders to discuss slavery in each region. Liana’s work contrasts the public against the private, and the censored proslavery script against what was perceived to have been slanderous vilification, often provided by abolitionists or those opposed to the continuation of the Atlantic slave-trade.

Liana is also personally interested in the history of football in Argentina, especially the social function of the Barras Bravas among marginalised groups.

Keywords: Cuba, History of the Emotions, slavery, masculinity, Spanish Empire, censorship, nationalism

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Stefania Paredes Fuentes

Stefania Paredes Fuentes joined Warwick in 2015 and she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics. Stefania’s PhD research focused on what matters for economic growth and institutional development in Latin America. In particular, she investigated the theory of ‘colonial origins of institutions’ in the region. Some literature in Economics and social sciences argues that current institutions in former colonies reflect colonial institutions. These theories are based on the idea that institutions change (very) slow over time. In her thesis, Stefania shows that current institutions in Latin America are weakly correlated to colonial ones. She then explains what matters for the origins and evolution of these institutions. The main findings show that natural resources and post-colonial British intervention can help us to explain why Latin American societies are so unequal and how the high levels of inequality affect the evolution of institutions in the region.

Stefania has also worked on the effects of oil exploitation in the non-oil economy in Ecuador. Ecuadorean economy is heavily reliant on oil exports, and changes in oil prices have large effects on this economy. Focusing on the 2000s increase in oil prices, we can observe that the Ecuadorean economy showed clear symptoms of ‘Dutch disease’ after the commodity market experienced an abrupt increase in commodity prices. Policies that look into diversifying the economy are desirable.

Stefania is currently working on two projects. One is on how we can adopt a human right-based approach to improve economic policy, the second project works on understanding what affects how students’ use of academic resources may impact their exam performance.

Keywords: Ecuador, natural resource curse, colonial institutions, post-colonial institutions, human rights, education

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Rafael Alejandro Vaquera Salazar

Rafael Vaquera’s academic background is in business planning and supply chain management. He obtained his B.A. from the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas and his M.Sc. degree from the University of Sheffield. His current PhD research at Warwick Business School is related to energy policy, institutional change and corporate non-market strategy. Previously, he was project manager and lecturer at the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas and collaborated in several research initiatives with colleagues from Chiapas (Mexico), Chihuahua (Mexico) and Santiago, Oriente (Cuba).

Keywords: energy policy, energy security, institutional change, oil and gas industry, Mexico, North America

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Erika Herrera Rosales

Erika Herrera Rosales is a second-year PhD student from the Sociology department at the University of Warwick. Drawing on decolonial/postcolonial theory and critical human rights approach, her research addresses the relationship between humanitarian organisations and migrants from Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras) in the context of Mexico. Specifically, her project explores the roles, discourses and experiences of migrants and staff members centred around various NGOs, shelters, and migrant houses (casas del migrante) located in Mexico City, Tapachula and Tijuana. By questioning how colonial attitudes are being reproduced in these organisations, the research also captures practices of negotiation and resistance.

Keywords: non-governmental organisations, Mexico, Central America migration, decolonial/postcolonial theory, humanitarianism

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Alejandro Veiga-Exposito

Alejandro is a Postgraduate Researcher and Spanish tutor at Warwick. He is broadly interested in the intersection of literature, film, and politics, particularly to the fields of literary and critical theory in Hispanic and Latin American Studies. His engagement with critical theory results in the articulation of aesthetics and politics, philosophy of language, and psychoanalysis. His PhD thesis, supervised by Prof. Alison de Menezes and Dr Fabienne Viala, compares contemporary literary approaches to crisis in Spain and Venezuela. The project explores new emerging aesthetics in both short fiction and poetry dealing with the ontology and phenomenology of crisis subjectivities, under the provisional title of Poetics of Crisis in Spanish and Venezuelan Contemporary Literature.

Keywords: Spain, Venezuela, fiction, poetry, film, psychoanalysis, literature

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Cecilia Lanata-Briones

Cecilia is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Economics at Warwick. She is also an Adjunct Researcher of the Centro Interdisciplinario para el Estudio de Politicas Publicas (Argentina). She is an economic historian who focuses on the historical production and use of quantitative economic knowledge. She is developing new projects on the circulation of knowledge on household budget surveys across Latin America and on the history of business and macroeconomic statistics in the region. She is currently editing a volume on the history of statistics in Latin America.

Keywords: History of statistics, Economic history, History of economic thought

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Camilo Uribe Botta

Camilo is a Colombian PhD History student currently working on the history of the orchid trade between Colombia and the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century. He is working under the supervision of Prof. Rebecca Earle and he was awarded the Chancellor's International Scholarship by the Doctoral College of the University of Warwick. Camilo investigates the commerce of Colombian orchids in Victorian Britain. Long before they became an icon of Colombian national identity, orchids played a very important role in the commerce between the United Kingdom and Colombia. His goal is to both shed a new light on the importance of the trade relations in Colombian history, while also bringing attention to the current state of conservation of these once nearly extinct plants.

Keywords: Colombia, Victorian Britain, trade, orchids, 19th Century

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Rosie Doyle

Rosie is the Senior Teaching Fellow in Latin American History at Warwick. Rosie's doctoral research and publications to date were among the outputs of the St Andrews-based digital history project The Pronunciamiento in Independent Mexcio 1821-1876. Her current research project is a history of human rights in Mexico. It is a study of how the relationship between Liberation Theologians, local communities and indigenous rights and human rights activists has developed since the late 1960s. Rosie is co-convenor of the Warwick Oral History Network.

Keywords: Oral History, Mexico, human rights, indigenous rights

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Elizabeth Chant

Liz is Assistant Professor in Hispanic Studies at Warwick and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her research examines how nature has been understood in the Americas as an object to be consumed, with a special focus on visual culture. Liz specialises in the histories and cultures of Argentina and Chile; her doctoral thesis examined how Patagonia’s desolate mythologies have been constructed since the late eighteenth century. Her current project investigates how domestic tourism in Argentina and Chile facilitated extractivism and indigenous dispossession in the early 20^th century.

Keywords: Argentina, Chile, Patagonia, environmental humanities, visual culture, critical theory

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