People

Chair of the Latin American Studies program

Steering Committee

Affiliated Faculty

  • Aleksa Alaica (Anthropology). Anthropological archaeologist. Human-animal interactions among the Moche cultural phase of the North Coast of present-day Peru. Wari state expansion, food security and interregional interaction in the Nasca region.
  • Gage Averill (Arts). Haiti, Haitian music; sound, music and power, music and politics; Caribbean music, steelband; ethnomusicology, world music.
  • Jon Beasley-Murray (French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies). Latin American cultural, literary, and political history; the Latin American left and social movements; ruins; film.
  • Kim Beauchesne (French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies). Colonial Latin American literature and culture; postcolonial theory; notions of hybridity and multiculturalism; Trans-Atlantic/Trans-Pacific Studies; the politics of utopia in Latin America; literature and human rights.
  • Maxwell Cameron (Political Science). Comparative politics (Latin America) and international political economy; democratization in Latin America.
  • María Carbonetti (French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies). Practices of distinction, cultural, symbolic, and material consumption; community engagement; Spanish for Community.
  • Anna Casas Aguilar (French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies). Literature, film, transatlantic studies, feminism, psychoanalysis, Chile, Mexico.
  • María Adelaida Escobar Trujillo (French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies). Transcultural interactions, identity and gender dialogues in and between the cultures of Spain and Latin America.
  • Claudio Ferraz (Economics). Political Economy and Development Economics; governance and accountability in developing countries, how politics affect public service delivery, the effects of electoral rules on political selection, and the role of the state in high crime and violence environments.
  • Denise Ferreira da Silva (The Social Justice Institute). Critical Racial and Ethnic Studies, Feminist Theory, Critical Legal Theory, Political Theory, Moral Philosophy, Postcolonial Studies.
  • Bill French (History). Latin American history; Mexican history (19th and 20th century); labour and social history; working class culture; gender.
  • Gastón Gordillo (Anthropology). The spatiality of politics; race and ethnicity; Argentina; indigenous groups and criollos of the Gran Chaco; ruins; social memory, place-making, hegemony, borders and transnationality.
  • Kristen Hopewell (School of Public Policy and Global Affairs). International trade, global governance, industrial policy and development, with a focus on emerging powers, including Brazil.
  • Hiroyuki Kasahara (Economics). Econometrics, International Trade; Chile.
  • Elizabeth Lagresa-González (French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies). Early modern Hispanic literature and culture; intersection of gender, visual and material studies.
  • Shaylih Muehlmann (Anthropology). Environmental politics; linguistic anthropology; drug trafficking; indigeneity; water scarcity; the anthropology of the awkward; US-Mexico borderlands; Mexico.
  • Brianne Orr-Alvarez (French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies). Twentieth-century Latin American literature and culture; cultural and political theory; gender and masculinities; revolutionary and post-revolutionary Studies; myth and mythification.
  • Manuel Piña (Art History, Visual Art, and Theory). Global culture and politics; the ways in which visual culture, particularly photography, has historically advanced political agendas.
  • Nuno Porto (Art History, Visual Art, and Theory). Curator, Africa and Latin America, Museum of Anthropology.
  • Pilar Riaño-Alcalá (The Social Justice Institute). Colombia; historical memory and the cultural dimensions of violence; forced migration (internal displacement and refuge); communities, social development and public art.
  • James Rochlin (Political Science, UBC Okanagan). Latin American politics and critical security studies; exploration of new conceptions of security in Latin America, including those related to insurgencies, race and class, as well as production of oil.
  • Anthony Shelton (Anthropology and Museum of Anthropology). Critical museology; the incorporation of pre-Columbian ‘art’ into western collections, the non-Western art market, museums and national identity; Mexican and Iberian visual cultures; the influence of evangelisation and politics on the visual cultures of Latin America.
  • Jerry Spiegel (School of Population and Public Health and Liu Institute for Global Issues). The effects of globalization on health; global health and human security; the economic evaluation of interventions; health and equity in Latin America; Ecuador, Cuba.
  • Diane Srivastava (Zoology). Community ecology; the ecology of species diversity; biodiversity, conservation, habitat loss; Costa Rica.
  • Jessica Stites Mor (History, UBC Okanagan). Argentina, Southern Cone; Latin American cinema, cultural studies; human rights, solidarity, transnationalism, citizenship.
  • Juanita Sundberg (Geography). Central America; the US-Mexico border; feminist theory, critical race theory, post-humanism, and political ecology.
  • Felipe Valencia Caicedo (Economics). Intersection of Development Economics, Economic History and Economic Growth;  particularly interested in economic persistence with an emphasis on Latin America.
  • Arturo Victoriano-Martínez (French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies). Caribbean Literature and Culture.
  • Hannah Wittman (Land and Food Systems). Rural and environmental sociology; agrarian citizenship; rural agricultural policy; community and rural development; agrarian political economy; social movements.
  • Annalee Yassi (School of Population and Public Health). Infection control in promoting healthy healthcare; HIV, TB and other infectious disease in the healthcare workforce; Ecuador, Cuba.
  • Antje Ziethen (French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies). African literatures and francophone literatures; (urban) space, migration, and gender; literature across the African continent through the lens of transatlantic migration.

See also the full list of Latin Americanist faculty at UBC Okanagan.

Affiliated Interdisciplinary Programs Administration

  • Jason Lieblang, Director of First-Year & Interdisciplinary Programs for Arts
  • Carmen Radut, First-Year & Interdisciplinary Programs Administrator
  • Kelly Chan, First-Year & Interdisciplinary Programs Coordinator
  • Doris Xiong, First-Year & Interdisciplinary Programs Systems Coordinator
  • Amanda Lim, First-Year & Interdisciplinary Programs Assistant
  • Raven Toth, Student Marketing and Communications Assistant