Institute of the Americas

Newsletter 2013

UCL INSTITUTE OF THE AMERICAS, GOWER STREET, LONDON, WC1E 6BT

PAR ENGSTROM

FROM THE DIRECTOR STAFF UPDATES

PAULO DRINOT

PAR ENGSTROM

COLIN LEWIS

TONY MCCULLOCH

KEVIN MIDDLEBROOK

MAXINE MOLYNEUX

IWAN MORGAN

EMILY MORRIS

KATE QUINN

GRAHAM WOODGATE

VICTOR BULMER-THOMAS

REPORT ON THE AMERICAS SPECIAL REPORT

VISITING FELLOW REPORT NOTES FROM THE FIELD

PROGRAMMES RESEARCH STUDENTS MASTERS STUDENTS

YALE COLLABORATION

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The new academic year is a good opportunity to welcome our incoming students, and to reflect on the first year in the life of UCL’s Institute of the Americas. In September last year the paint was not yet dry on our newly refurbished building in Gordon Square and we had not yet moved ourselves in. Much has happened since then and while setting up the Institute has made it an exceptionally busy year, it has also been a very exciting one with many good moments.

Some of our efforts were directed at course development with the result that we start the new academic year with a suite of new Masters courses on offer to our incoming students. We have also developed a new MSc in the International Relations of the Americas to fill a gap in both specialist and comparative knowledge of the hemisphere. Students taking this course can choose modules on inter-American and Latin/North American international relations, and can specialise in their dissertations on Latin America, the US, Canada, or the Caribbean. This new Degree and the new courses confirm the Institute as having the largest post graduate teaching programme on the Ameri-cas in the UK, and it is also the only one specialising in Social Sciences and History. While the greater part of our teaching programme is that on Latin America with a total of 16 courses on offer, our US and Caribbean teaching programmes are an essential and increasingly popular part of our course offerings allowing students to think about the region comparatively and to reflect on the transnational processes within it.

In addition to our teaching activities we will continue to organise a full year Events programme. Last year saw the Institute hosting 98 public lectures, conferences, sympo-sia and panels. For this year the regional seminars on Latin America, the United States, the Caribbean and Canada, will continue as regular events, and in addition we have planned some high profile policy- related and current affairs confer-ences. We will also be looking forward to the contribution of our Visiting Fellows to our Events Programme across the year and to welcoming them as members of the Institute.

Looking back over last year, among the highlights was Professor Iwan Morgan’s appointment to the Commonwealth Fund Chair in History. This significant and well deserved honour was an-nounced at Iwan’s inaugural lecture delivered last May titled ‘The US deficit Habit: What are the Causes and What lessons does His-tory offer for breaking it?’. While Iwan’s Chair is held in the Histo-ry Department he remains based at the Institute and will continue to lead the US programme and the US Presidency Centre. Other good news in regard to the US programme is that we are

funding a UCL-IA/BAAS Visiting Fellowship to support scholars in Politics and History. We are looking forward to welcoming two Fellows under this new scheme: Dr Maria Ryan, Lecturer in American History at the University of Nottingham and Dr Nick Witham, Senior Lecturer in History and American Stud-ies, Canterbury Christ Church University, who will join us for a term each. We have also established the John Maynard Keynes Fellowship in US Politics and History, the first distin-guished occupant of which will be Martin Halliwell, Professor of American Studies at Leicester, who will be researching his new book provisionally entitled ‘Voices of Health and Illness: Medicine, Psychiatry, and American Culture, 1970-2000’. Other highlights include the gaining of a Leverhulme Fellowship to support our Human Rights programme led by Par Engstrom. This Fellowship will enable human rights lawyer and sociologist Professor Roberto Gargarella from Argentina’s Instituto Torcuato Di Tella to join us from January 2014 to deliver a series of lectures and seminars. We were also successful in securing a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship: Dr Tom Grisaffi, an anthropologist, will join us in May 2014, for three years. He will be developing a research project titled ‘Indigenous Visions of Democracy: An Ethnographic Study of Political Values and Betrayal in the Chapare Province, Bolivia’. Kate Quinn’s AHRC-funded Net-work ‘Westminster in the Caribbean’ will enable three major events over the next two years to take place, one of which will be held in Jamaica. We were also fortunate to secure a second Canadian Foundation grant to support Tony McCulloch’s very successful programme of activities on Canada. Other awards gained were Par Engstrom’s Santander Catalyst Award which funded a very productive visit to the University of São Paulo; Graham Woodgate and Emily Morris with UCL colleagues, both won UCL Grand Challenge grants, - Emily to work on Transport and Environment in Cuba; and Graham to work on ‘Anaerobic Digestion for Small Scale Urban farming’. Emily also won an FCO grant to support the Cuban Transport research which will bring Cuban academics over to the UK to work with UCL colleagues.

There have been other good developments with regard to the Research Networks on the Americas that we support. The working group that two years ago set up ‘Radical Americas’ as a student network has now become a fully fledged professional network of international scholars. It organised a highly successful two-day conference in June. The group is now preparing to publish the papers and is planning to start a new journal. A fledgling network that we hope will flourish has also begun its work to bring togeth-er scholars on the Amazon from a variety of disciplines; and the Argentina Research Network, founded by a former student of ours

Letter from the

Dear Students, Colleagues, and Associates,

Director

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has also graduated into a highly successful network of more than 100 scholars, with a string of successful events to its name and a new website. And lastly, we are very pleased to announce the founding of two new Institute-based networks: the UCL Americas Research Student Network has been set up by our current doctoral students. They have had their first successful meeting and have developed an attractive programme of seminars for next year to which all research students are welcome; the other new network is Latin American Politics which will be jointly led by Kevin Middlebrook (UCL-IA) and Laurence Whitehead (Oxford).

So as you can see we have a busy year ahead and look forward to seeing students, friends and associates before too long. Before signing off this newsletter, I would like to congratulate the first graduands of the new Institute, comprising our first cohort of Mas-ters Students, and also our successful Doctoral students, four of whom had their vivas this year and will soon be launched on their new post- PhD lives. We wish you all well in your future careers!

MAXINE MOLYNEUXPAR ENGSTROM

PAR ENGSTROM

PAR ENGSTROM

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Dr Paulo DrinotThis academic year was particularly busy. I participated in several conferences. In September, I gave a short paper on anticommu-nism in Latin America at a conference in Manchester. In January, I attended the American Historical Association meeting in New Orleans, where I presented a paper on venereal disease in Peru in the first half of the twentieth century and was discussant on a panel on the history of food in Latin America. In April, I partic-ipated in the Society for Latin American Studies conference in Manchester, where, again, I spoke on VD. In May, I attended the Latin American Studies Association conference in Washington DC. 2013 is the tenth anniversary of the publication of the report of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission and a number of events were organised to discuss its legacies. I participated in a pre-conference workshop at George Mason University and served as discussant on a panel at LASA itself. I also presented a paper on state formation and VD in a panel that compared state build-ing in Mexico and Peru. I visited Switzerland twice, first in March, when I gave a keynote at the University of Bern, and then in May, when I presented a new paper on cybermemories of the Peruvian armed conflict at a conference held at the University of Zurich.

Several collaborative projects are now coming to fruition. A co-ed-ited book (with Alan Knight, Oxford) on the Great Depression in Latin America should be entering production at Duke University Press soon and will hopefully be published sometime in 2014. A volume on comics and memory in Latin America, co-edited with James Scorer (Manchester) and Jorge Catalá-Carrasco (New-castle), to which I have contributed a chapter on Juan Acevedo’s brilliant comic strip, El Cuy, is almost ready to be sent to the publishers. I am also completing an edited volume titled Peru in Theory, which includes a number of essays that discuss issues such as institutional weakness, social conflict, or racism, through the lens of authors such as James C. Scott, Michael Mann, and Judith Butler, and to which I have contributed a chapter that offers a foucaultian reading of Alan García’s second presidency (2006-2011). I continue also to work on a monograph on venereal disease, prostitution and sexuality in Peru, c.1850-1950, which I hope to publish in the not too distant future, and on several shorter pieces, including an article on the interplay of sexology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis in mid-twentieth century Peru.

I was delighted to act as external examiner on two excellent vivas, first in February, by video-link, at the Université de Montréal, where Marc Drouin brilliantly defended his dissertation on ‘La guerre contre-insurrectionnelle guatémaltque et les sources his-toriques’, and, a month later, at the Université de Paris-Sorbonne, where Carlos Camacho’s ground-breaking ‘histoire croisée’ of the Leticia war between Peru and Colombia in the early 1930s was awarded the highest mark by an examination committee which included three UK-based Latin Americanists. Continuing with the French connection, in late June I was invited to take part in a ‘Journée doctorale’ in Peruvian studies at Nanterre. This was a great opportunity to meet up-and-coming France-based Peruvian and Peruvianist historians and anthropologists, as well as some

legends of French scholarship on Peru such as Jean Piel. Both excellent Bourgogne and exquisite cheeses, as well as copious canapés, were served at lunchtime. UCL catering take note.

In addition to teaching my second-term course on the history of commodities in Latin America, my main responsibilities at the Institute this year involved supervising research students, coordinating the Latin American events programme (see the report elsewhere in this newsletter), acting as graduate tutor for research students, and serving as the Institute’s research officer. I have put together two new courses, which I will teach in academic year 2013/14. ‘The Making of Modern Latin America: History, Politics and Society’ is a graduate level survey course of Latin American history since the late eighteenth century, while ‘Histories of Exclusion: Race and Ethnicity in Latin America’ is an undergraduate course which will be offered in the History department. I continue to serve on the editorial board of three journals, the Journal of Latin American Studies, Apuntes (Peru), and Salud Colectiva (Argentina), and to chair (with Kim Clark of the University of Western Ontario), the Latin America net-work of the European Social Science History Conference, which will meet in Vienna in April 2014. I also continue to convene, along with colleagues at other institutions, the very successful Latin American History seminar at the Institute of Historical Research (podcasts of seminar presentations available here).

Staff Updates

PAR ENGSTROM

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Dr Par EngstromStaff Updates

My academic year was dominated, in various ways, by Brazil. I gave a number of talks on the politics of human rights in Brazil, both at home and abroad, as well as past and present. In January, I spoke on the topic of Brazil and international human rights at the Opening Conference of UCL Model United Nation’s Society (lecture available here). In February a Santander Universities Re-search Catalyst Award brought me to the University of São Paulo (USP), and in March I participated in a conference where I sought to locate the Brazilian Truth Commission in a broader context of post-transitional justice in Brazil. In June at USP I sought to reflect (again…) on human rights and Brazilian foreign policy, while trying to connect the perceptions of and expectations on what Brazil seeks to do abroad with what happens at home (my remarks are available here). In July I gave a lecture to members of staff at the Ministry of Justice in Brasília on Brazil and the Inter-American Human Rights System (remarks are available here). And, I was awarded a Visiting Professorship at USP to teach a two-week intensive course in August on Transitional Justice in Latin America.Beyond Brazil, it has also been an eventful year in Colombia of course, and with Andrei Gomez Suarez I published the first UCL-IA policy brief entitled “Colombia: Towards Ending the Longest Armed Conflict in the Western Hemisphere?” that came out of an expert roundtable at UCL-IA in October (available here). To build on this momentum we also launched a network of scholars - British Academics for a Colombia Under Peace (BACUP) – that understands its role as building a group of critical friends to the peace process, contributing deeper understanding of the diverse historical roots of armed conflict and violence as well as looking forward to what a Colombia ‘under peace’ might look like (http://bacupblog.wordpress.com/). And, with regards to Argentina, I contributed with my thoughts on the death of

the former de facto President of Argentina Jorge Videla to BBC Radio 4 ‘Last Word’ programme (available here), and I offered some brief reflections on Argentine human rights trials beyond Videla to the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Forum in a piece, entitled ‘Addressing the Past, Avoiding the Present, Ignoring the Future? Ongoing Human Rights Trials in Argentina‘ (available here). Please note the title’s question mark [?]…

In terms of my research on the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS) it was also an eventful year. I co-organised a workshop at USP in July that brought together a group of scholars from universities in Europe, the United States, and Latin America to develop collaborative research on the develop-ment and domestic impact of the Inter-American Commission and Inter-American Court of Human Rights. I participated in a workshop at the University of York at which I focused on the role of the protection mechanisms of the Inter-American Commis-sion available to HRDs in Latin America (slides), and I had the opportunity to discuss my thoughts on the role of the IAHRS in shaping transitional justice trends in Latin America at the LASA Annual Conference in Washington D.C. (remarks available here), and closer to home in London (paper available here). Together with Tom Pegram (soon to join UCL’s new Institute of Global Governance) I continued to manage the project on National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) and Torture Prevention in Latin America (see project website for updates).

Further information on my various research activi-ties is available on my personal website and on my Academia profile. For (somewhat) continuous re-search updates follow me on Twitter: @pogeng.

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This year I taught a course on Latin American development in comparative context at the University of Beijing Summer School, and gave guest lectures in the UK. My essay ‘“Colonial” industry and “modern” manufacturing: opportunities for labour-intensive growth in Latin America, c.1800-1940s’ was published in the volume Labour-intensive Industrialisation in Global History edited by Gareth Austin and Kaoro Sugihara (London: Routledge 2013). I gave interviews to the European and Latin America media about current events in Latin America, particularly forth-coming elections in the Argentine and the continuing impact of global volatility on economic development. I continue to work on a book about British business in the Argentine, hoping to complete final revisions during the coming year, in time for the centennial conference of the Argentine-British Chamber of Commerce, to be held in Buenos Aires, to which I have been invited to contribute.

Professor Colin LewisStaff Updates

PAR ENGSTROM

PAR ENGSTROM

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In the last year my role as Senior Fellow in North American Studies at UCL-IA has involved teaching, administration and research in both US and Canadian history and politics. In particular, as well as teaching US foreign policy as part of the MA in US History and Politics, I organised the Canadian Studies events programme which included ten seminars, an inaugural lecture, a conference on “Quebec and the World” and another one on the political career of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada’s longest-serving prime minister (full details can be found elsewhere in this Newsletter). I also attended an authors’ workshop in Montreal, was awarded

the annual Prix du Québec for a second time and was elect-ed President of the British Association for Canadian Studies for a three-year term commencing in April 2014. Finally, I spent a week at Yale University developing the Institute’s links with Canadianists and Americanists at that universi-

Dr Tony McCullochStaff Updates

ty – again further details are included in this Newsletter.In terms of research and publications, my chapter on Franklin Roosevelt and democracy promotion was included in a book on US Presidents and Democracy Promotion (Routledge, 2013) that was launched at the Institute in April 2013. I also have a chapter on FDR in another book on the US presidency to be published by Routledge in 2014 and a chapter on Quebec-UK relations since the 1960s in a book on Quebec’s international relations to be published by McGill-Queens’s University Press in 2014. In the coming year I will again be teaching US foreign policy and organising an extensive Canadian Studies events programme. My main writing commitment will be to finish my book on Franklin Roosevelt and the origins of the Anglo-American “special relationship” which is due to be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2014.

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I recently published a co-authored book (with Professor Gra-ciela Bensusán, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Socia-les-México) titled Sindicatos y política en México: cambios, continuidades y contradicciones (Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales / Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales-México / Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Xo-chimilco, 2013, 211 pages). The book examines the changes, continuities and contradictions characterizing labour politics in Mexico since the 1980s. Among other topics, it includes the first comprehensive assessment of Mexico’s 2012 federal labour law reform and its implications for union democracy and national development. By engaging debates concerning organized labour’s role in democratization, and by demonstrating the essential compatibility between market-based economic policies and state-labour practices rooted in Mexico’s author-itarian past, the analysis contributes to a broader assessment of organized labour’s role in contemporary Latin America.

Professor Kevin MiddlebrookStaff Updates

PAR ENGSTROM

JOHN GALLAGHER

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I am engaged in ongoing research on the political and social factors which affect the outcomes of anti-poverty programmes in developing countries. In February 2012 I undertook to serve as research director to set up a project funded by DFID and managed by the Overseas Development Institute on social protection in develop-ing countries to bring my experience of Latin America to bear comparatively on programmes in Africa and the Middle East. The research was completed last year and the 5 country reports and an overview report synthesizing the findings have since been published (transformingcashtransfers.odi.org).

My current research is engaging an emerging policy issue which is how to bring ‘social accountability’ into social protection, - put simply, how to ensure that poor people have a greater say, and are listened to, in the design, implementation and evaluation of these programmes, and here issues of rights and citizenship are central. These questions and others will be discussed at an international policy symposium in October and the papers presented there will form the basis of a special issue to be published next year. I will also be working on other publications arising from the research over the course of the coming year. In addition to this project I have started a small side project on the new migrations in Latin America. Migration is a long standing interest, and one I hope to take up again in the future when time permits a closer involvement.

Other continuing core responsibilities include editing the Palgrave Stud-ies of the Americas Series which published five books over the last year with several more in press or with reviews or revisions pending; and I continued to

serve as an active editor on the Editorial Board of Economy and Society. As far as outreach activities are concerned I was pleased to be asked by the editor of the 50/50 section of Open Democracy, Deniz Kandiyoti, to be interviewed about women’s rights in the wake of the apparent rise of violence against women in some parts of the world. The results appeared in February posted as ‘Of Rights and Risks: Are women’s Human Rights in Jeopardy?’; also in February I was asked to contribute to The Guardian’s Poverty Matters section which published “Listen to Poor People: don’t just hand out the Cash” (February 15,2013). A special issue I edited with Jasmine Gideon titled Limits to Progress and Change: Reflections on Latin Ameri-can Social Policy appeared in Social Poli-tics last Autumn (Vol 19, Issue 3 October 2012). And a short piece for the Debates section of Gender and Development appeared in July as ‘Giving the Poor a Say: Transforming social protection’ (Vol 21:2 ).

Other research and outreach activities in-volved giving lectures and talks at various events, including some at UCL. In January it was an honour to deliver the opening lecture of the 3rd UCL Model UN Confer-ence on the theme of ‘The UN and Wom-en’s Rights in Latin America’; also at UCL I acted as discussant at an event co-organ-ised with the Poverty Forum ‘Re-thinking Poverty’ held in October. I also chaired and spoke at an event to launch a cam-paign against violence against women with panel members Stella Creasy MP, documentary filmmaker Catharine Round, and Carolina Gottardo, Director of the Latin American Women’s Rights Service which carries out important support work with undocumented and migrant women in London - and it is also an organisation that a former Master’s student, Marcela

Professor Maxine MolyneuxStaff Updates

Benedetti, has worked for over many years.

It was a special pleasure to give the opening tribute to a conference titled ‘Gendered Horizons in the Middle East and Central Asia’ held at SOAS to mark Deniz Kandiyoti’s retirement from SOAS and to celebrate her many seminal works. And at another event of a similar kind I gave my last talk of the year in July titled ‘Who Remembers Beijing? Women’s Rights in a Cold Climate’ at Essex University to celebrate the work of Diane Elson, a leading Gender and Development specialist who has played an important role in pushing for a comprehensive post- MDG agenda, and who now, though for-mally retired will remain as active as ever.

The main travelling this year was two trips to Washington DC both thanks to the Latin American Studies Association, in fulfil-ment of my responsibilities as a member of its Executive Committee. This meant that I was also able to attend the LASA conference and to take the opportunity of being in Washington to meet up with a range of development policy people to discuss common research interests.

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It’s been a busy year since coming to UCL. On the research front, I have published a co-edited book, Seeking a New Majority: The Republican Party and American Politics, 1960-1980 (Vanderbilt University Press) a collection of essays exploring the pre-Reagan revival of the party. I have also published an article in Journal of Policy History on the Federal Reserve battle against inflation in the 1980s and the contribution of this to the financial-ization of the US economy. I am currently writing a biography of Ronald Reagan that encompasses his entire life. I am supposed to finish by mid-2015, but the going is slow! Meanwhile I have taught a wide mix of MA options for UCL-IA and a new under-graduate module on Richard Nixon and Watergate for the History Department. In addition I organized the US events programmes

whose highlights were the Commonwealth Fund colloquium on the post-war liberal consensus, the Richard Neustadt Lecture on the American Presidency, and the Eleanor Roosevelt Lecture. The high points of the year for me were giving my inaugural address in May on ‘The US Deficit Habit’ – I have held a chair in three universities but this is the first inaugural I have ever given. As a very big bonus, news came through the same day that the Provost had approved me becoming Commonwealth Fund Professor of American History, an honorary position in the History Department. I also gave one of the UCL Lunchtime Lectures on the US Elections, spoke on Lincoln movies in the UCL Festival of the Arts, and gave a commentary after the showing of a movie on Richard Nixon during the UCL documentary film festival.

Professor Iwan MorganStaff Updates

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This past academic year, I (i) undertook research on Latin American economics; (ii) coordinated a research collabora-tion project on Havana’s transport system; and (iii) provided consultancy services on current developments in the Cuban economy; and (iv) worked on a book based on my thesis on Cuban post-1990 economic policy and performance.

Dr Emily MorrisStaff Updates

My work on the first two of these culminated in two very different events at the Institute in June 2013. The first, ‘Report on the Americas 2013: Economies in Flux’, organised in partnership with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, was designed as the first in an annual series of ‘Report on the Americas’ events. Representatives from the London-based Embassies of the Americas, and Latin American consultancies, attended. The event was a success, and stimulated new ideas for next year. The leading suggestion for the continent-wide theme for the 2014 ‘Report on the Americas’ conference is migration. The second event, with the support of UCL’s Grand Challenges (Sustainable Cities) grants, brought researchers from different departments and disciplines together for a two-day workshop to examine the principles of a sustainable transport strategy for the city of Havana. Participants were enthused by the possibilities for this project, which has support from the British Embassy in Havana and includes the participation of Cuba’s Ministry of Transport and Havana City Physical Planning Department. In July, the project was presented at an ‘Environment and Development’ conference in Havana, eliciting fresh interest and opening new possibilities for future development.

JOHN GALLAGHER

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As head of the Caribbean programme at the Institute of the Amer-icas I have been involved with convening the MA in Caribbean and Latin American Studies and running the Caribbean events programme, as well as working on research and publications. In the academic year 2013-2014 I taught two MA courses on the Caribbean, ‘The Caribbean from the Haitian Revolution to the Cuban Revolution’ and ‘Politics, Society and Development in the Modern Caribbean’, and offered classes on the MA courses on Globalisation and Latin American Development, Researching the Americas, and Cuba in Transition. I have also developed a new undergraduate course on ‘Race and Resistance in Black Atlantic Thought’, which will be offered in the History Department from September 2013. This academic year also saw the publication of Politics and Power in Haiti (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), a volume I co-edited with Professor Paul Sutton. The Institute held a book launch in April to mark its publication, with the panel-lists examining the political history of Haiti and the prospects for the country since the earthquake of January 2010. Another

edited collection, Black Power in the Caribbean, will shortly be published by the University Press of Florida. In November, I gave a paper based on my introduction to this book at the Postcolonial Seminar Series, Cambridge University. As Chair of the Society for Caribbean Studies I have also been heavily involved in the organisation of the Society’s annual conference, this year held at Warwick University, 3-5 July. As ever this was a lively event, with speakers from the US, the Caribbean, Europe and the UK. Lastly, I have been deep in preparations for the inaugural conference of the ‘Westminster in the Caribbean’ research network, which will take place in September 2013. This network, funded by an AHRC international research network grant, examines how the political model inherited from Britain was adapted to the conditions of the Caribbean, its impact on Caribbean democracy and the challenges the model has faced over the period of independence. For more information on the network and its activities see: westminsterinthecaribbean.com

Dr Kate QuinnStaff Updates

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Taking on the role of Graduate Tutor for our Masters Degrees at the beginning of last academic year put me on a steep learning curve to familiarise myself with UCL rules and regu-lations. Then, in February this year, I extended my part-time contract and took on a similar role (Departmental Tutor) for UCL’s new flagship interdisciplinary Bachelor of Arts and Sciences undergraduate programmes.Administrative roles aside, 2012-13 was an exceptionally busy year for all of us as we established our presence within UCL, met new colleagues and developed exciting opportunities for collabora-tion. A particularly exciting development has been the establish-ment of a new UCL research network – Amazonia: Landscape in Crisis which we have formed with colleagues from the Institute of Archaeology, the Anthropology Department and the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (CEGE). Col-leagues in Archaeology are working on the origins of agriculture, anthropogenic soils and the historical ecology of the Amazon Ba-sin. Anthropologist, Marc Brightman’s work on indigenous own-ership and leadership in Amazonia, and his current research into the globalisation of tropical forest conservation and aspects of the ‘green economy’, are of particular interest due to my own profes-sional involvement within and scholarly interest in the political ecology of sustainable forest management and ‘carbon forestry’.In this context I am particularly pleased that the Institute of the Americas has attracted the attention of Dr Divaldo Rezende, who will be joining us in October as a visiting fellow. I first met Divaldo in the 1990s, when he came to Wye College to read for the MSc in Rural Resources and Environmental Policy. Since then Divaldo has established himself as a leading figure in forest-based, carbon sequestration policy and practice and is currently serving as Secretary of State for the Environ-ment in Tocatins State Brazil. Over the coming year I will be working with Divaldo to further develop and refine the Social Carbon certification standard that he has established, which was developed to strengthen the co-benefits of carbon offset projects and enhance active participation of stakeholders.On a much smaller scale, I shall be working with colleagues from CEGE on a London-based emissions reduction project. Having won a grant from the UCL Grand Challenges ‘Sustainable Cities’ programme, we will be investigating the potential of anaerobic digestion to reduce the climate and wider environ-mental impacts of the 1.3 million tonnes of organic waste that the capital produces each year. So what has this to do with the Americas? Well the small scale digester technology that we will be using has been developed in Mexico as a means for small farmers to make the most of their on-farm resources and reduce their own carbon emissions. Anaerobic digestion of organic matter produces methane for cooking and heating and liquid fertilizer for horticultural production – thus making nutrient and carbon cycling more efficient and reducing the negative environmental impacts of livestock production. Our research project will be based at Surrey Docks Community Farm.

In other developments, at the beginning of the year I was appointed ‘International Expert in Environmental Sociology’ to the ‘Feeding Knowledge Programme’ that is being developed in preparation for Expo 2015 ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’ in Milan. In this role I have been contributing the development of an Expo white paper on ‘Sustainable Development of MarginalRural Communities’ and, in June, I delivered a webinar on ‘Agroecology and sustainable food systems: empowering local communities towards food sovereignty’. Our efforts are aimed at generating and sharing knowledge and best practice for ensuring food security. My work in agroecology has also progressed with a co-authored article in the first number of Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems which is the new title for the Journal of Sustainable Agriculture. I also continue to contrib-ute to the Joint Official Postgrad. Programme in Agroecology offered by a consortium of three universities in southern Spain.In 2013-14 my contribution to the Institute of the America’s taught programmes, will change slightly as I hand over the coordi-nation of research methods course to Dr Kate Quinn and deliver a new course on ‘Environment Issues, Movement and Policies in the Americas’, which will be available to all of the Institute’s Masters Students. In another new development, my course ‘Sustainable Development in Latin America and the Caribbean’ will be opened up to UCL’s final year undergraduate students. Finally, it is a great pleasure to see how the number of applications from research students increased dramatically last year and I am looking forward to welcoming Ms Sacnicte Bonilla Hernandez, who will be investigating the growing trend among young people from rural Mexico, deciding to remain in their towns and villages rather than migrating to the cities. Sacnicte comes to us with a grant from Mexico’s National Council for Science and Technology, CONACyT.

Dr Graham Woodgate Staff Updates

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I gave three lectures at the Institute of the Americas on my new book (The Economic History of the Caribbean since the Napoleon-ic Wars). The three lectures reflected the three parts of the book: The Age of Free Trade; The Age of Preferences; and The Age of Globalisation. I also lectured at the University of Belize on a book I co-authored in 2012 with Barbara Bulmer-Thomas (The Economic History of Belize: from 17th Century to Post-Independence).

As a result of the publication of these two books in 2012, I participated in a number of conferences in the Caribbean. These included a workshop organized in September by the International Monetary Fund in Trinidad & Tobago for Ca-ribbean Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors.

I undertook a consultancy project for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) on Belize and Regional Integration. It explores the possibilities for Belize to be more fully integrated into the three regions to which it belongs: the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico. I lectured on this topic at the Central Bank of Belize and at the University of Belize in Belmopan.

Staff Updates

Professor Victor Bulmer-ThomasStaff Updates

I have started work on a new book provisionally entitled ‘Empire without a Name: Past, Present and Future of the United States’. It will be in three parts. The first is on the territorial empire, starting in 1783. The second is on the (semi)global empire, starting in 1945. The third is on the retreating empire, whose starting point cannot be given with such precision as for the first two parts.

JOHN GALLAGHER

LORNA CORBETT

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Special Report

On June 14th, the Institute of the Americas hosted a one-day conference to review the economic progress of the economies of the Americas in 2013, and the risks to growth in the years ahead. The keynote speaker for the conference, organised with the support of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, was Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid, Deputy Director and Research Coordi-nator at ECLAC’s Mexico Office. He outlined the region’s recent, relatively positive, economic performance and structural strengths, but highlighted persistent weaknesses and new challenges. In 2013, the former chronic imbalances that used to characterise Latin American economies, which were revealed in wide fiscal and external deficits and high debt burdens, appeared to have disappeared. Growth has strengthened and poverty rates have declined. But he highlighted that the improvement had coincid-ed with an increase in dependence on primary commodities, exchange rate overvaluation, relatively low levels of productive investment and a persistently low tax/GDP ratio. Among the urgent challenges now are to find ways to reduce vulnerability to a downturn in terms of trade, build fiscal capacity and raise productivity. Some of the structural vulnerabilities of the US ‘industrial renaissance’, described by Phil Mullan ( Institute of

Ideas) echoed those of Latin America: a low level of investment, weak productivity growth and lack of employment generation. These themes were picked up by Michael Reid (Latin America Ed-itor, the Economist, in a presentation on ‘Latin America at the Twi-light of the Great Commodity Boom’), John Bowler (Director, Coun-try Risk Service, EIU; ‘The Americas in the World: Risks, Strengths and Weaknesses’) and Ricardo Ffrench-Davis (Adviser to ECLAC; Universidad de Chile; ‘Challenges of macroeconomic management in Latin America today’). Specific policy efforts to strengthen insti-tutions and economic structure were explored by Diego Sanchez Ancochea (Oxford university), who looked at the Central American experience; Mahrukh Doctor (Hull university), who considered the role of development banks; Carmelo Mesa Lago, who drew lessons from pensions reforms; and Gilberto Arias (UN negotiator and former Panama Ambassador to the UK), with an account of climate change negotiations and their implications for the hemisphere.The conference presentations are available on the website of the Institute of the Americas

Report on the Americas 2013: Economies in Flux

JOHN GALLAGHER

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In June, a two-day multi-disciplinary workshop was held at the Institute of the Americas, to consider how to improve transport, mobility and access in Havana. The iconic 1950s cars, so treasured by tourists, are a symptom of the mobility problems suffered by the city’s population as a result of the local government’s chronic shortage of finance. The researchers, drawing on international experience, identified a unique opportunity arising from Havana’s low existing car ownership and new possibilities for financing. They concluded that, with new threats to Havana’s environment and access arising from economic reforms, the need for an integrated strategy is urgent. Details of the workshop are available on the website of the Institute of the Americas http://www.ucl.ac.uk/americas/ia-events/havana-transport.The workshop was the first phase of a multidisciplinary in-ternational collaboration coordinated by Dr Emily Morris, Research Associate at the Institute of the Americas. The project, which is supported by UCL’s ‘Grand Challenges’ fund and the British Embassy in Havana’s ‘UK-Cuba Bilateral Partnership Scheme’, is led by UCL and the Cuban ministry of transport. The UCL team includes Professor Julio Dávila, Director of the Development Planning Unit (DPU), and Professor Nick

Tyler, Head of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (GECE). Cuban participants include researchers from the ministry of transport, Havana City offi-cials and a broad range of other research and policy bodies. The London workshop paved the way for the second stage: to begin to feed into the Cuban policy process. In July, Profes-sor Dávila and Dr Morris travelled to Havana to present the project at an international conference on environment and development, and meet policymakers. The positive official Cuban response has paved the way for a visit to London by three Cuban researchers, to be followed by a second work-shop, to be held in Havana in February 2014, which will draw up the outlines for more detailed feasibility studies. These studies are intended to provide the basis for Cuban access to new sources of finance that are now becoming available for developing countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By offering UCL’s extensive experience in international research on transport systems, and knowledge of the climate finance architecture, the Institute of the Americas hopes to be able to help to ‘revolutionise’ Havana’s transport system. Watch this space!

International collaboration on a sustainable transport strategy for Havana

Special ReportSpecial Report

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For the last seven months I have had the pleasure of studying at the Institute of the Americas. It has been both a pleasurable and instructive experience. First I must thank Dr. Maxine Molyneux for inviting me to be a fellow at the Institute and Dr. Kate Quinn for welcoming me and making me feel at home. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but once I settled in I began to appreciate the strengths of such a centre. In the first place, the Bloomsbury area proved to the ideal place to study given the topic of my research. Over the past four years I have been writing a biography of William Hardin Burnley, the biggest slave owner in Trinidad before slavery was outlawed. I was familiar with Burnley’s life in Trinidad since he had lived in the village where I lived, and my family and I were intimately acquainted with his plantation and the Trinidad aspect of his life. Therefore, the frames of references—his resi-dence, the people with whom he associated, the towns and villag-es he frequented—came easily to me so I was able to make sense of the setting in which Burnley lived and amassed his fortune.UCL put me in touch with the English aspects of Burnley’s life. Born in New York in 1780, Burnley moved to the Bloomsbury area of London where he put down his roots. His parents lived at No. 1 Brunswick Square; he was married at St. George’s Church in Bloomsbury; and his son William Frederick was baptized at St. Pancreas. When he visited England from Trinidad, he stayed at Brunswick Square from where he conducted all of his correspondences with the Colonial Of-fice. Studying in this same area made Burnley’s English life and associations all that more real to me. I felt that I knew rather than simply imagined this aspect of Burnley’s life.The Institute asked me to speak about my research at its Carib-bean Seminar Series. This was my first opportunity to convey my findings and allowed me to respond to the many questions raised about the man and his life. Even questions of my research methodology were important. They helped to sharpen my think-

ing about my topic. As fate would have it, at the same time that I was writing about this very important colonial figure, the history department of UCL was working on its very important compen-sation study on slave holders which allowed me to plug my work into what they were doing. In this context, my work primarily with Dr. Nick Draper was very important. He read my work closely and I could raise many questions with him about the project. I also attended Professor Catherine Hall’s lecture on the same project from which I gained many insights that helped me in my research. Later, Catherine read my manuscript and offered valuable sug-gestions. Her many questions were very helpful to me. Being in an environment where there were so many important discussions on the very topic I was researching proved to be very important.I cannot thank Dr. Molyneux and Dr. Quinn too much for all that they did in welcoming me to the center. Dr. Quinn was partic-ularly important in acquainting me with the University as she served as my guide at the Institute. Without her I would have been lost. Being a fellow at the Institute of the Americas proved to be a valuable learning experience for me. While I spent a lot of time at the British National Archives, the Newspaper Library at Collingdale, and the British Library, my association with the Institute was most useful in that I profited from the people I met there and the very welcoming atmosphere that I encountered.All in all, my semester at the Institute of the Americas was a most enjoyable experience. After being exposed to the won-derful world of study and association in London, I return to Wellesley refreshed by this intense scholarly experience.

SELWYN R. CUDJOEWELLESLEY COLLEGE

Selwyn R. CudjoeVisiting Fellow Report

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Notes from the fieldELIZABETH ROSE

Having been to Cuba quite a few times previously, as a tourist, I was looking forward to going specifically to do research for my Masters Dissertation. I guess I knew that carrying out research about Cuban modern dance and the choreographer, Eduardo Rivero Walker, would take me into uncharted waters...which is exactly where I wanted to be.

In Santiago de Cuba everyone in the field of the arts knows everyone else. I soon found that my initial contacts were making many suggestions as to who else I should meet. It became obvious that I couldn’t possibly see all of them. It is said that you need infinite patience when conducting fieldwork. I quickly learned that you also need a lot of tact. Contacts sometimes came from unexpected sources, too. The lady I was staying with, a painter, introduced me to an old university friend of hers, who turned out to be the Head Librarian in charge of the Arts in the Santiago library. He made available to me a collection of original programmes, many of which he had personally col-lected over the years, of Eduardo Rivero’s work. Another casual conversation with someone at the Casa del Caribe led to my first long interview with a former dancer of Danza Nacional de Cuba, who had also been a close personal friend of Rivero’s.

Materials at the library of Casa del Caribe were surprising and insightful. The Toussaint l’Ouverture library is housed in a stunning old mansion, which is currently being renovated. There was noise, dust, much banging and crashing of plasterwork, as I attempted to work in a small room with two older ladies attending me, surrounded by old books, leaflets and piles of papers, literally stacked from the floor to the very high ceiling. One of the attendants kept disappearing behind a screen to light candles, burn herbs and shake maracas...to cleanse the place of any unwanted spirits. Working with archives was much more exciting than I had imagined. The other part of the work entailed daily conversations with Eduardo Rivero’s daughter and widow, who granted me access to some of Eduardo’s private papers, relating to his work in Belize and Jamaica. They

showed me videos of interviews, classes and performances in both countries, dating from the 1980s to 2011, and gave me the telephone numbers of key contacts to ring up in Havana.

One morning I found myself “cold calling” the Artistic Director of Danza Contemporánea de Cuba at his home, on the recom-mendation of Eduardo Rivero’s widow, Xiomara. I was terrified. An hour later I found myself in the company’s studios at the Teatro Nacional and had been given access to their archives and the assistance of the company historian, Pavel García. In the next door studio the dancers were warming up to the beat of the batá, and noisy rehearsals continued throughout the day and for the rest of the week. It was 34°C, I was surrounded by fascinating documents and some of the most beautiful dancers in the world. Sometimes fieldwork is about luck.

LORNA CORBETT

I recently undertook fieldwork as part of my dissertation research for my MA in Latin American Studies. My study is looking at the challenges ahead for the wine industries of Chile and Argentina so I wanted to speak directly with wine-makers, national marketing organisations, and managers at wineries big and small to gain invaluable insight into what is happening in the industry from those who really know.

I put a lot of effort into arranging interviews prior to leav-ing London and started to make contacts early. I’m glad I did as it was much harder than I had anticipated to get the contact details of the experts I wanted! E-mails and phone calls were relatively fruitless but pursuing the leads I had, pushing for introductions and networking at wine events eventually paid off. This resulted in scheduled interviews for almost every day of my trip with some fantastic people.

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My first stop was Santiago, Chile. After a long weekend on the coast getting to know a bit about Chile and its people, I spent over a week based in the city centre for my interviews. From formal interviews with executives from large wineries to coffees with smaller, innovative wine producers, I quickly developed an understanding of shared and differing concerns within the Chilean wine industry today. I was learning a huge amount and becoming more inspired by my dissertation topic each day! The second half of my trip was a short trip across the Andes to Mendo-za. Here I spent a hectic week undertaking interviews at wineries scattered around the province. This meant I could see for myself the vast vineyards in the shadows of the Andes and was even treated to some private tours around wineries, seeing where they trial new grapes, seeing traditional fermentation methods and huge quantities of barrels - and even a few bonus wine tastings!

The majority of my interviews were hugely insightful and I think speaking the language definitely helped. Having some fluency meant I could more easily demonstrate I had done my research, ask the questions I had planned to but also change focus depending on how the conversation flowed. Most people

seemed to be interested in my study and on side from the beginning, which gave me confidence that they felt the inter-view was worth the time they were taking out of their day.

Upon returning home I really had a clear idea of where I wanted my dissertation to go and what themes I would pick out from the vast secondary sources I had amassed over the academic year. Securing the interviews was difficult but going well prepared meant that I got what I wanted from them and could actually really enjoy the experience. I met great people along the way, some of whom I am still in contact with and hope to catch up with soon the next time business brings them to London.

JAIMIE ENOCHFrench Guiana, officially “Guyane”, stands out as the last relic of European colonisation in the continental Americas. Despite the extreme, almost defensive manifestation of French state power in this Amazonian region, Guyane is certainly not immune from the tides of globalisation and the movement of people associated with it. The French Republican legal, economic and social framework governs in a territory where there is no majority ethnic group. It is therefore often described, in an official discourse which tends to veil any latent tensions, as a “mosaic” of peoples, which is constantly being enriched by new waves of immigration from across the Caribbean and South America.

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My dissertation aims to examine how migrants from Haiti, who first arrived in the 1960s and swelled to around 20 percent of the population in the 1980s, have been incorporated in a territory which is itself unevenly and ambivalently integrated into France. One hypothesis to test was whether overlap between Haitian and French Guianese Creole culture in terms of language and customs might ease integration of first-generation Haitian migrants and their children, in comparison to other Caribbe-an societies where the sometimes violent stigmatisation of Haitians and their descendants has become deeply-entrenched. I intended to find out whether Guyane’s resemblances to aspects of Haiti, its multi-ethnic population which might prevent targeted scapegoating and, normatively at least, its French traditions of respect for minorities and human rights, create a welcoming context for Haitian immigrants and refugees.My qualitative research, in the form of 16 semi-structured interviews conducted over two and a half weeks, took me to a family communion celebration where I was strongly encouraged to sample caiman and macaque, washed down with ti’punch, an invigorating blend of pure rum and cane syrup. I went to an illegally constructed neighbourhood where huge houses with palatial courtyards are screened behind

storey-high corrugated metal walls. Perhaps the most surreal experience was being followed to an interview by my host family’s tenacious, hyperactive dog and having to ask my kind interviewee, himself in the throes of dengue fever, to drive me back home to drop off my faithful canine friend. Through such encounters, a picture emerged of unique challeng-es faced by Haitians in Guyane due to subtle intercommunal ten-sions and abuses of power at the local level, the extent of which I could never have perceived without fieldwork. Nonetheless - and despite difficulties with such generalisations - Haitians are an increasingly prosperous, well-educated and integrated element of the diverse French Guianese population. They already contribute extensively to the economic and cultural life of the area and may play an increasingly crucial role in regional politics in the future. Perhaps the most powerful sentiment conveyed by many Haitians was their strong religious faith, which, coupled with their enduring attachment to Haiti, helps create a resilient sense of optimism in the face of countless difficulties experienced by the migrants and by their families on the other side of the Caribbean. It was a unique, extraordinary opportunity and I am incredibly grateful to the Institute for its contribution to my fieldwork.

NEIL KINGHANSouth Carolina is a great place to do fieldwork. Charles-ton is one of the most beautiful cities in the United States and the food, especially the seafood, is wonderful. Ad-mittedly it gets hot. One nineteenth-century American traveller described July in Columbia, the state capital, as like hell. But you can visit at other times of the year.It’s a good place for historical research too. I made some remark-ably helpful contacts after a couple of initial rebuffs, so good that I plan to take advantage of them for a PhD, provided my MA disser-tation is accepted! My subject is Reconstruction in South Carolina, the brief period after the Civil War when black people could vote and hold office, in particular the life and career of Francis Cardozo, the first African American to hold state-wide office in the US.My first attempts at contact with a local historical society and a local academic reminded me that Reconstruction is still controversial in South Carolina and that some aca-demics may not welcome new students of their subjects. Thereafter, with a combination of persistence and good luck, I was much more successful with my new friends.First, I made contact with the secretary of the South Carolina Jewish Historical Society in Charleston. She did not know my man but she knew his father’s family, which was Jewish and, most importantly, she wanted to help. She put me in touch with other historians at Charleston College and the South Carolina

Department of Archives and History and, best of all, with a Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina who had written a ground-breaking article about Francis Cardozo.Normally, as my UCL tutor has pointed out, historians are protective of their sources and the research they have done. My USC Law Professor broke the mould. He had done a lot of research on Cardozo, with the help of his research students, in the thought of writing a book about him. He had decided against, for a variety of reasons, but he had kept his files, which he was happy for me to use. More than that, since he is planning to retire in a year or two, he is happy for me to take them away!I was very lucky to find this Professor and I have, of course, pursued other sources too, including the wonderful Chronicling America Database of historical newspapers created by the Library of Congress and the American Missionary Association’s archive of 200 letters written by Cardozo. Since my vinitial rebuffs, the historians and archivists I havev contacted have been generous with their time and their willingness to help, most of them pleased to find a research student interested in their subject.We are immensely privileged these days to have access to so much online. But personal contact is still the best, not least to understand the place you are researching. It helps if the place is sufficiently beautiful and interesting that you wife likes it too.

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CANADIAN STUDIESOne of the characteristics of the UCL Institute of the Americas that makes it unique, not only within the UK but also globally, is that its work encompasses all of the Americas, including Canada. The Canadian Studies programme at UCL-IA aims to provide a focus for teaching, research and outreach activities that promote discussion about Canada and its place within the Americas and within the wider world. The programme also provides a forum for debate about Canada-UK relations, both contemporary and historical. The programme is largely funded from external sources, especially the Foundation for Canadian Studies and the London Canadian Studies Association. An important and very enjoyable part of the 2012-2013 programme was the series of fortnightly seminars that took place, usually on Mondays, throughout the academic year. Refreshments were made available from 5.30pm – including Canadian wine, which proved to be very popular – and the seminars began at 6.00pm. In addition to Canada’s relations with the US, Latin America, Spain and the UK, topics ranged from the history of bigamy in Quebec and Canadian assimilation policy to Canada’s role in the Arctic and in Afghanistan. Attendance at the seminars varied between about ten and twenty and regularly included members of the Foreign Office, the Canadian High Commission and Quebec Government House as well as students and staff and members of the public. The varied list of speakers included Dr Mel-anie Methout (University of Alberta), Dr Jatinder Mann (King’s College, London), Dr Damien Belanger (University of Otta-wa), Dr Sarah Scott (Australian National University, Canberra), Mr Philip Peacock and Mr Nicolas Maclean KMG (Canada-UK Colloquium), Dr Jennifer Jeffs (President of the Canadian International Council, Toronto), Dr Hector Mackenzie (Depart-ment of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and Carleton University, Ottawa), Sir Nicholas Bayne (LSE, former British High Commissioner to Canada), Ms Vivien

Hughes (ex-Foreign Office and Canadian High Commission) and Ms Karolina MacLachlan (King’s College, London). Other highlights of the programme included the UCL-IA inaugural Annual Canadian Studies Lecture on 7 Febru-ary 2013, Canada - in from the Cold? Valedictory Thoughts of a British High Commissioner. The lecture was delivered in a very engaging manner by Anthony Cary, British High Commissioner to Canada, 2007-2010, who delighted the audience of about fifty with reminiscences of his time in Canada and his analysis of Canada’s contemporary place in the world

The programme also included two inter-national conferences with an impressive array of speakers from Canada, the United States and Britain. The first, on “Quebec and the World” took place in March 2013. The second, in July 2013, was on the career of William Lyon Mackenzie King - Canada’s longest serving Prime Minister, occupying the position for 22 years between 1921 and 1948. Selections of pa-pers from both conferences are due to be published as edited collections in 2014.

DR TONY MCCULLOCH, SENIOR FELLOW IN NORTH AMERICAN STUDIES

CARIBBEAN PROGRAMMEThe academic year 2012-2013 has been a busy one for the Caribbean programme of the Institute of the Americas, UCL. Over a dozen events were held as part of the regular Caribbean seminar series, with highlights including a series of talks on the economic history of the region by Profes-sor Victor Bulmer-Thomas, a panel on the life and work of Michel Rolph Trouillot, and a musical performance by Cuban hip-hop artist Alain García alongside Holly Turn-bull, a former student of the Caribbean programme. Visiting scholars Professor Robert Hill (UCLA) and Professor Anthony Bogues (Brown) drew in the crowds for their talks on ‘M.G. Smith and the Report on the Ras Tafari Movement in Kingston’

and ‘The Radical Caribbean Intellectual from Toussaint L’Ouverture to Walter Rodney’. The Institute was also delighted to host Professor Selwyn Cudjoe, Professor of Comparative Literature and of Africana Studies at Wellesley College, as Visiting Professorial Fellow in the spring term.

The Institute also offers a unique programme of teaching and research on the Caribbean and its diasporas. This year we celebrated the success of two doctoral students who successfully defended their theses on Caribbean subjects: Dr Steve Cushion, whose thesis examined the role of organised labour in the insurrectionary phase of the Cuban Revolution, and Dr Dylan Vernon, whose study centred on patronage politics and its implications for democracy in Belize. The MA in Caribbean and Latin American Studies continues to offer a unique opportunity to study the diverse societies of the Caribbean and the Latin American continent from a compar-ative perspective, encompassing not only the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking territories but also the Anglophone, Francophone and Dutch territories of the mainland and islands. Students on the MA are currently working on their end of year dissertations – with subjects ranging from the dance diplomacy of Cuban dancer and choreographer Eduardo Rivera Walker, to radical politics in the post-independence Eastern Caribbean.

The Institute also hosts a number of research networks focused on the Carib-bean. The AHRC-funded international research network on ‘Westminster in the Caribbean: History, Legacies, Challenges’, headed by Dr Kate Quinn, will hold its inaugural conference on 19-20 September 2013. We look forward to hearing key-notes by Professor Emeritus Norman Gir-van (UWI, St Augustine) and by Professor Brian Meeks (UWI, Mona) as they explore the legacies of the Westminster model of governance in the Caribbean and the pros-pects for democratic renewal in the region. The Caribbean Postgraduate Network,

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drawing together research students from across the UK working on any aspect of the Caribbean and its diasporas, will hold its annual conference in November – rounded off, of course, with a rum punch reception. We look forward to another lively year!

KATE QUINN (CARIBBEAN PROGRAMME COORDINATOR).

LATIN AMERICAN STUDIESThe Institute’s Latin American Programme, now at UCL, had a great year in 2012-13. Its three primary degrees, Latin American Politics MSc, Latin American Studies MA and Globalisation and Latin American Development attracted an excellent first cohort of students. Some of the research undertaken by these students in the context of their dissertations is listed elsewhere in this newsletter.

The Latin American Programme draws much of its strength from the research and other activities undertaken by our dozen or so research students, who work on broad range of topics, including media politics in Argentina, ethnic voting in Peru, security in Brazil, and agrarian reform in Ecuador (see the section on PhD students). See elsewhere in this newsletter for details on the new UCL Americas Research Students Network, set up by our students.

This was particularly busy year in terms of Latin American events. Some thirty events on Latin America were held at the Institute. These ranged from large international conferences and workshops (such as on return of the PRI in Mexico) to panels and roundtable discussions (on the Venezuelan elections, on compar-ative perspectives on violence against women, on Venezuela after Chávez, and on the Paraguay elections) to lectures on highly specialised topics (such as Winston Churchill’s Cuban adventures).

Professor Rhys Jenkins, of the University of East Anglia, delivered the annual Global-isation and Latin American Development lecture. His topic was the ‘Impact of Chi-nese Economic Growth on Latin American Development’. Latin America’s links to China were further explored at a daylong international workshop co-organised with the UCL History Department’s Centre for Transnational History, which included pre-sentations on a range of different topics.

We also helped launch several books, including Rosemary Thorp’s book on ex-

tractives in Latin America and Africa, Andre Cicalo’s monograph on affirmative action in Brazil, Ciro Bustos’ book on his revo-lutionary experience with Che Guevara, Carmelo Mesa-Lago’s book on social poli-cy in Cuba, and Peter Lambert and Andrew Nickson’s Paraguay Reader, the latest addition to Duke University Press’s Latin American Readers. Several of these events were organised in collaboration with one or more of our stakeholders, including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Latin American embassies in the UK.

2013-14 promises to be another exciting year for the Latin American programme. The Institute’s Latin America Programme will feature several new modules. These options include, ‘The International Politics of Latin America’ (K Middlebrook), ‘Latin American Economics: Beyond Neolib-eralism’ (E Morris), ‘The Transformation of Cuba: 1990 to Present’ (E Morris) and ‘Environmental Issues, Movements and Policies in the Americas’ (G Wood-gate), and ‘The Making of Modern Latin America: History, Politics and Society’ (P Drinot). For upcoming events make sure to check our website regularly.

DR PAULO DRINOT (LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAMME CO-ORDINATOR)

US PROGRAMMESThe US programmes have generally had a very successful first year in UCL in 2012-13. The US teaching programmes had a small but very committed cadre of new MA student s augmented by the transfer of part-time students who began the pro-gramme when UCL-IA was the Institute for the Study of the Americas in the University of London. With the benefit of growing awareness that UCL-IA is now located at UCL, we hope to have a larger intake of postgraduate students in 2013-14. We also instituted plans to expand the portfo-lio of US modules to benefit recruitment.Aided by UCL-IA’s administrative staff, we bedded down the MA US Studies teaching programme, which included a new core module – Researching the Americas: USA, and benefited greatly from the availability of Tony McCulloch to teach the US foreign policy modules. We were additionally grateful that the History Department continued to allow its US History modules to be offered on our MA. In return, now being part of the UCL community, we were for the first time able to welcome some of their students on our UCL-IA modules. Furthermore, we engaged for

the first time, in undergraduate teaching with Professor Morgan’s delivery of a new module, ‘Richard Nixon and Water-gate’ for the BA History programme. The US programme also offered a rich series of evening events and conferences. Among other things, we held a very popular symposium on the US Election the day after the poll, a well-attended talk on the US economy, a presentation on the Supreme Court’s recent judge-ment on Obamacare, and several book launches. We maintained our annual collaboration with the British Library Eccles Centre to co-organize a symposium on Hollywood and the Great Depression. We also launched three new ventures. We inaugurated two very well attend-ed public lectures – Professor George Edwards (Texas A&M) delivered the Richard Neustadt Lecture on the American Presidency (attended by members of the Neustadt family, including his widow, Baroness Shirley Williams), and Professor Susan- Mary Grant (Newcastle), an alumna of the old Institute of United States Studies, delivered the Eleanor Roosevelt numerous other seminars and talks. Thirdly, we organized on behalf of the history Department the Commonwealth Fund Colloquium in American History on ‘The Post-War Liberal Consensus: Myth or Reality,’ an international venture keynoted by an eminent scholar of modern America, Professor Gary Gerstle (Vanderbilt).In terms of research, US Studies scholars continued to produce outputs, some based on previous conferences held under the auspices of our events programme. In addition, the British Association of American Studies set up two one-term fellowships to be hosted by UCL-IA. These were to be awarded on a competitive basis for younger scholars, with the first fellows chosen to take up positions in 2013-14 being Dr Nick Witham (Canterbury Christ Church) and Dr Maria Ryan (Notting-ham). Furthermore, UCL-IA selected Professor Martin Halliwell (Leicester) to be the recipient of the inaugural John Maynard Keynes Fellowship in 2013-14.

PROFESSOR IWAN MORGAN (UNITED STATES STUDIES PROGRAMME CO-ORDINATOR

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ALEJANDRA SERPENTE

In the last year I have been working towards completing my PhD research (title: Dias-poric Chilean and Argentinian narratives in the UK: The traces of second generation postmemory) which I finally submitted in June 2013 and successfully defended in my viva in July 2013. I also presented a paper at the Architectures of Affects conference in Zurich (June 6th-8th) on the commemorative practises of a group of Chilean exiles in the UK called Ecomemoria with a look at how two second-generation Chilean participants related their experi-ences of taking part in the group with their initial involvement as youngsters in the dai-ly picket held against Pinochet during his detention in London between 1998-2000.

ANTHONY TEITLER

My introductory year to the doctorate has been a fulfilling and stimulating one. The start of the year involved a clear understanding of why I wanted to examine US foreign policy towards Afghanistan and what the key political, philosophical and methodological challenges would potentially be. Did I want to focus exclu-sively on the relationship between these two countries? This would have likely also meant travelling to Afghanistan for research and interviews (something I have done pre-doctorate), or whether I wanted to focus more closely on one side, i.e. the United States’ foreign policy towards Afghanistan. From this, I started to understand the his-torical significance of this relationship and therefore whilst I am critically interested in the prism of the 9/11 world and how the ‘global war on terror’ was constructed, I am also cognisant of the importance of giving a rich contextual understanding by including the Soviet invasion onwards in order to examine when and why foreign policy follows a pattern of continuity or change. The historically resonant and subjective idea of US exceptionalism articulated by US political leaders and how this impacts on the reality in Afghanistan is an important determinant of what I am examining.

GEOFF GOODWIN

I have concentrated on finishing my PhD thesis over the last twelve months. I com-pleted a full draft at the end of May and plan to submit in October-November. I have also been involved in a number of other academic activities. I helped organise the first Radical Americas conference which was held at the Institute of the Americas, UCL on 28-29 January. The event was a great success, attracting students, academics, and activists from across Europe, North America, and Latin America. I then helped run two Radical Americas panels at the Society for Latin American Studies annual conference, which took place at the Univer-sity of Manchester on 11-12 April. The first explored Latin American Marxisms of the Cold War era and the second examined Latin American “Socialisms” of the 21st Century. I am currently working with other members of the Radical Americas Network to develop a publication platform for a selection of the papers presented at the Radical Americas and SLAS conferences. In addition, I participated in a panel that analysed the political, social, and economic programme of the Rafael Correa govern-ment which was held at the Institute of the Americas, UCL on 03 December.

MICHAEL ESPINOZA

I have presented a paper titled “Myth, Memory and the Reagan Legacy: Taxes and the GOP” at the British American Association Studies (BAAS) post-graduate conference and at the American Politics Group (APG) annual conference (both University of Leicester). This paper was then published by the 49th Parallel journal in May 2013. In mid-August, I presented an overview of my thesis (titled “The Winning Combination: Conservatives and Socialism in Post-Cold War America”) at the Life Be-yond the PhD post-graduate conference at Cumberland Lodge. I was awarded the sole bursary from the UCL Graduate School to attend this event. Later in August, I will be presenting a paper titled “The Evolution of Conservative Republicanism and its Effect

on Polarisation” at the University of Chica-go, assisted by a conference travel grant from the UCL Graduate School and the UCL Institute of the Americas. I am also co-or-ganising a conference on New Perspectives on American Populism at King’s College London on 4 October with Alfred Cardone (KCL) and Martin Walter (University of Nottingham). Regarding my PhD progress, I have completed a draft of my thesis and will be moving on to the Completing Re-search Status (CRS) for the upcoming year.

RICHARD DOTOR

In the last academic year I have completed a draft of the entire thesis and am now in the process of revising it with the intention of submitting the final version in Septem-ber 2014. Following the recommendations of my supervisor, Iwan Morgan, I have addressed some substantive issues and worked to improve the prose of the entire thesis. I am now in the process of redrafting my introduction and following that I will complete one last review of all chapters. For this academic year I reduced my teaching commitment to a 0.8 contract so that I would have one entirely free day a week to work on my thesis. This proved to be very productive although I was required to go back to a full-time teaching commit-ment shortly after receiving feedback on my draft. In September I start a new job as Director of Higher Education for the Guildford College Group which will only allow time for study during holidays. It is my intention therefore to work on the thesis as much as I can throughout the academic year and then use the summer of 2014 as the time to finalise the entire thing.

SAM KELLY

My research focuses on how race and eth-nicity may influence contemporary voters’ electoral decision-making in the Andes. I have spent the last nine months based in Lima, Peru, where my work has been concentrated on the collection and analysis of data relating to three principal investi-gative ‘paths’ which guide my research.

These three ‘paths’ are both method-ologically and disciplinarily-conceptually diverse, and draw on three distinct ‘sources’ for data: (i) public opinion surveys, which constitute the basis of a detailed statistical analysis of possible relationships between ethnicity, policy preferences and voters’ candidate evaluations; (ii) a comput-er-based ‘election simulation’, designed to offer a glimpse into the micro-level processes of individual voters’ electoral decision-making; and (iii) a series of interviews with local scholars, journalists, civil servants, politicians and activists which should add some qualitative ‘flesh’ to the more quantitative ‘bones’ of the survey analysis and simulation. During my stay in Peru, my time has been divided between these three research areas, with a particular emphasis on the design and testing of the simulation, which is/was, after a long development phase, finally due to be launched at the end of August.

It is hoped that the conceptual and methodological heterogeneity of this ‘three-pronged’ approach can provide new insights into the ways in which race and ethnicity are drawn into, and may shape, electoral politics in the region.

Research Students

THOMAS MAIER

Since transferring to the Institute of the Americas at UCL last autumn, my main fo-cus has been on strengthening the concep-tual design of my PhD project and writing the first primary-source based sections of my dissertation. The warm and helpful envi-ronment of the Institute has helped me a great deal to move forward with my project, including with the upgrade to PhD status in July. Besides this, I was busy co-organizing the first Radical Americas conference at UCL in January this year, and coordinating the future steps of this promising network with colleagues from all over the UK. Further projects included participation at a conference in Berlin on expert knowledge in Latin American History from local, trans-national and global perspectives, and the creation of a UCL wide network of research

25ucl.ac.uk/americas

These three ‘paths’ are both method-ologically and disciplinarily-conceptually diverse, and draw on three distinct ‘sources’ for data: (i) public opinion surveys, which constitute the basis of a detailed statistical analysis of possible relationships between ethnicity, policy preferences and voters’ candidate evaluations; (ii) a comput-er-based ‘election simulation’, designed to offer a glimpse into the micro-level processes of individual voters’ electoral decision-making; and (iii) a series of interviews with local scholars, journalists, civil servants, politicians and activists which should add some qualitative ‘flesh’ to the more quantitative ‘bones’ of the survey analysis and simulation. During my stay in Peru, my time has been divided between these three research areas, with a particular emphasis on the design and testing of the simulation, which is/was, after a long development phase, finally due to be launched at the end of August.

It is hoped that the conceptual and methodological heterogeneity of this ‘three-pronged’ approach can provide new insights into the ways in which race and ethnicity are drawn into, and may shape, electoral politics in the region.

students who work on the Americas, with the first seminar series to be launched next academic year. Over the coming months, my archival visit to Buenos Aires will be at center stage of my attention- I can’t wait to get hold of the most relevant archival material for my research, and to meet interesting scholars in my field! And well, I won’t complain about Malbec, Lomo and the exciting porteño jazz-scene either…

VERENA BRÄHLER

Since returning from my one-year field re-search in Rio de Janeiro in October 2012, I have focussed on analysing my data and writing up my thesis. Prior to starting this endeavour I had the impression that this would be an enormous (and tedious) task compared to the excitement of field work. However, before long I realised in what a privileged situation I was to be able to analyse my data in a friendly and calm environment and with the full support of my supervisors. I am currently in the stages of completing the first full draft of the thesis. In my analysis, I intend to show that the Right to Security cannot be enjoyed by all residents of the city of Rio to the same extent (“Inequality of Security”). I suggest that this is principally because of differences in the way security providers – such as police, municipal guards, military, private security companies, militias and drug traffickers – operate in the neighbour-hoods. Organised in a complex security network (“Oligopoly of Security”), these groups deploy disproportionate levels of violence for their economic and political ends, prompting us to remodel our under-standing of democracy, citizenship and the legitimacy of the Latin American polity.

Research Students UCL AMERICAS RESEARCH STUDENT NETWORKThe  UCL Americas Research Network was founded in June 2013 by a group of PhD students from UCL’s Institute of the Americas and other UCL departments. The aim of the network is to build an awareness and active engagement for all research students across UCL that work on the Americas (North-, Central-, South America and the Carib-bean). Furthermore it strives to provide a platform for a methodologically and theoret-ically enriching exchange by bringing together scholars from different disciplines in a friendly and informal environment. The network holds regular committee meetings and is currently planning a series of seminars for the academic year 2013/14. These semi-nars are meant to provide young scholars with the opportunity to present their research projects to a wider audience (the seminars will be open to the public) and stimulate the debate within the group

THOMAS MAIER

Since transferring to the Institute of the Americas at UCL last autumn, my main fo-cus has been on strengthening the concep-tual design of my PhD project and writing the first primary-source based sections of my dissertation. The warm and helpful envi-ronment of the Institute has helped me a great deal to move forward with my project, including with the upgrade to PhD status in July. Besides this, I was busy co-organizing the first Radical Americas conference at UCL in January this year, and coordinating the future steps of this promising network with colleagues from all over the UK. Further projects included participation at a conference in Berlin on expert knowledge in Latin American History from local, trans-national and global perspectives, and the creation of a UCL wide network of research

PAR ENGSTROM

DYLAN VERNON

My past year has been dominated by work to complete my thesis Big Game, Small Town: Clientelism and Democracy in the Modern Politics of Belize (1954-2011). This culminated in May after a successful

viva—the first at UCL’s new Institute of the Americas. However, I also found time for a few other projects. My book review of God-frey Smith’s George Price: A Life Revealed was published in Volume 102, 2013, of the Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs. I contributed to a chapter on the oil sector in Belize as part of a book to be published (2014) by the Inter-American Development Bank on extractive industries in Central America. This entailed a research trip to Belize and a workshop in Washing-ton, DC in June. In July, I presented a com-parative paper on ethnic politics in Belize and Guyana at the annual conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies in Warwick, UK. Currently, I am preparing papers for upcoming Caribbean conferences in Leiden, the Netherlands and in London. I am a co-organiser of latter conference on Assessing Westminster in the Caribbean: Then and Now held at the Institute of the Americas from September 19-20, 2013.

JUAN VENEGAS

My research aimed to explain current

high levels of political disaffection among Chilean youth. In the last year I finished my thesis and I successfully defended it in my viva that took place in July 2013. The main finding of the thesis was that youth political disaffection can be principally explained by a large disconnection between the political class and common citizens in Chile. This was explored through the analysis of the association between indicators of political disaffection and perceptions about the way of functioning of the Chilean Political system and the examination of several case studies that express these feelings of disaffection too. After finishing my thesis I started working at the Research Centre of the Chilean Ministry of Education. Moreover, I am also currently teaching the courses “Multivariate Quantitative Methods” at the Universidad de Chile and “Quantitative Methods” and “Applied Research in Political Science” at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado. Additionally, I started to translate my thesis into Spanish in order to publish it as a book in Chile.

26 INSTITUTE OF THE AMERICAS

MASTERS STUDENTS 2012-13

ADRIAN ANDREACCHIO, AUSTRALIAThe Role of Psychoactive Substances

as Entheogens and Medicines in Pre-Columbian Mexico

MA LATIN AM ST

MARK ABIRACHED, UK¡El ‘Nuevo’ Gran Viejo Partido!: The Rise of Latino Americans in the GOP

MA US: HISTORY & POL

ONIKA ADENEYE, UKObstacles to the Consolidation

of Democracy in HondurasMSC LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS

CAMILA BEESTON, UKFrom Tambogrande to Conga:

Social Protest Against Mining as a Force for Change in Peru

MSc LAT AM POLITICS

PAUL BENFIELD, UKMeasuring the Impact of Hugo

Chavez’s Populist Policies on the Venezuelan Energy Industry

MSc LAT AM POLITICS

SHARON BETTS, UKFrom Perfection to Parody:

Examining Presidents and Politics in Hollywood Movies of the 1990s

MA US: HISTORY & POL

CHARLOTTE BLANCHARD, UK ‘A regular hell is L.A.’: Dystopian Culture

and Politics in Los Angeles, 1990 - Present.MA US: HISTORY & POL

ELLEN BLOSS, UKThe Troubled Relationship: Women

and the Contemporary GOPMA US: HISTORY & POL

TIMOTHY CHILES, UKTransport as a Vector for Sustainable

Development in Latin American Cities: A Case Study of Medellín

MSc GLOB & LAT AM DEV

GILES CONSTANTINE, UKJoining the Fight: Indigenous

groups, Climate Change, and Policy in Contemporary Ecuador

MSc GLOB & LAT AM DEV

LORNA CORBETT, UKA Divide Far Wider than the Andes: Challenges Ahead for the Chilean

and Argentine Wine IndustriesMA LATIN AM ST

EMMA CORY, UKThe Colombian Conflict on

the International StageMSc GLOB & LAT AM DEV

ZITA DARGUZYTE, LITHUANIARussian Cultural Relations in Cuba during

the Putin-Medvedev PresidenciesMA LATIN AM ST

HIMALI DAVE, UKMSc LAT AM POLITICS

JAMES ENOCH, UKMigrants in the Mosaic: The Integration

of First- and Second-Generation Haitian Migrants in French Guiana

MSc GLOB & LAT AM DEV

BARBEL FRODERMANN, GERMANYMA US: HISTORY & POL

JOHN GALLAGHER, UKPeruvian Postmemories: University Students Discuss the Violent Past

MA LATIN AM ST

ROBERT GREEN, UK ‘Hitting the Ground Running’: A

Comparison of the Clinton and G.W. Bush Presidential Transitions

MA US: HISTORY & POL

JAMES HILLYER, UKMA US: HISTORY & POL

SHODONA KETTLE, UKMás allá del perdón histórico: The Invisibility of Afroperuvian Women and Youth in Peru’s Human Rights

Agenda and Public PoliciesMSc GLOB & LAT AM DEV

NEIL KINGHAN, UKA brief moment in the sun: Francis L Cardozo and Black

Reconstruction in South CarolinaMA US: HISTORY & POL

LOTTA KOSKINEN, FINLANDGrassroots sustainable development

initiatives in Latin America: prospects for a more environmentally sustainable future.

MSc GLOB & LAT AM DEV

SOPHIE LAING, UKPeru’s Gastronomic Revolution: Addressing

Racial Divisions in Peruvian Society?MSc GLOB & LAT AM DEV

ROSS LANCASTER, UKThe Labour Movement and

Development in Democratic BrazilMSc GLOB & LAT AM DEV

WILLIAM LEE, UKThe Effects of Chinese Trade

and Investment on Peru’s Economic Development

MSc GLOB & LAT AM DEV

ADAM LUNN, UKThe Impacts of the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos in Santiago, Chile

MA LATIN AM ST

AMANDA MOLENAAR, UKSeeking Full Fruition: Ecuador’s Banana

Exports during the Correa AdministrationMSc LAT AM POLITICS

SAMANTHA MORTIMER, UKMSc GLOB & LAT AM DEV

WERONIKA OZIERANSKA, POLANDMSc GLOB & LAT AM DEV

XHEMAIL PECI, KOSOVO/UKBill Clinton’s Balkans Policy: A Case of

Wilsonian Liberal Internationalism?MA US: HISTORY & POL

ELIZABETH ROSE, UKExporting the Cuban Model:

Internationalism, Dance and the Work of Eduardo Rivero Walker, 1979-2012

MA CARIBBEAN & LATIN

NATALIJA SASIC, UK/SERBIADisapproval Ratings: Anti-Hero Politicians

on American Television since 1998MA US: HISTORY & POL

RUSSELL SILK, UKPresidents and the Final Frontier: A

Comparison of Manned Space Policy in the Apollo Era and the Present

MA US: HISTORY & POL

JESSICA SOTO, USAWishful Thinking: Jimmy Carter’s Human

Rights Policy in El Salvador RevisitedMSc LAT AM POLITICS

MELANIE STERN, UKCosmopolitanism in Bolivia: A Case

Study of Second-Hand Clothing Consumption in Two Cities

MA LATIN AM ST

RODOLPHE TIMSIT, FRANCESustainable Development and Climate Change in Acre, Brazil

MSc GLOB & LAT AM DEV

FERNANDA VELASTEGUI, ECUADOR/UKMSc GLOB & LAT AM DEV

THOM WALKER, UKMSc LAT AM POLITICS

ROBERT WILLIAMS, UKRadical Politics in St Lucia, 1967-1983

JOHN GALLAGHER

27ucl.ac.uk/americas

PAR ENGSTROM

Yale CollaborationUCL Institute of the Americas is currently establishing links with Americanists at Yale University. Dr Tony McCulloch, Senior Fellow in North American Studies, obtained funding from the UCL Interna-tional Office to visit Yale in April 2013. While there he attended classes and met faculty and students with an interest in the US, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean. His host for the week was Professor Jay Gitlin, a member of the History Department and convenor of the Yale Canadian Studies Committee. Yale also has a thriving American Studies programme that focuses on the history, culture and society of the United States and a Council of Latin American Studies that is a leading centre for the study of the southern part of the hemisphere.Following on from this initial contact, on 26 June UCL-IA hosted a lunch for faculty and students from Yale as part of a trip

to London that included an exhibition of books and documents at the British Library and a tour of the indigenous American galleries at the British Museum led by Coll Thrush, Professor of Native American His-tory at the University of British Columbia. The lunch was also attended by colleagues from the Institute of Archaeology and other UCL departments. The Yale group was led by Paul Grant-Costa, Executive Ed-itor of the Yale Indian Papers Project. The London visit followed a conference on in-digenous studies at Oxford on 24/25 June organised by Professor Ned Blackhawk of Yale University and Pekka Hamalainen, Rhodes Professor of History at Oxford. Plans for the new academic year include a lecture by Professor Jay Gitlin on an aspect of North American history, provisionally scheduled for Monday 25 November 2013. Professor Gitlin is Associate Director of Yale’s Howard R

Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders and he has written extensively on the American West and French North America. His current work focuses on the history of the French in the Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes. His recent book The Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders and American Expansion (Yale University Press, 2010) won the Alf Andrew Heggoy Prize for the best book in French colonial history from the French Colonial Historical Society.In due course it is intended that there will be regular contact between staff and students at the UCL Institute of the Americas and Americanists (North and South) at Yale including an annual lecture, participation in seminars, student visits and research collaboration. For further information about Yale-UCL-IA links please contact Dr Tony McCull-och t.mcculloch@ucl.ac.uk

Institute of the Americas

JOHN GALLAGHER

Institute of the Americas

Newsletter 2013 DESIGN AND L AYOUT BY PAUL MAY

SPEC I A L T H A NK S TO:

PAULO DRINOT PAR ENGSTROMLORNA CORBET T JOHN GALL AGHER