The summer of 2015 I spent time in Mexico City conducting preliminary dissertation research with support from the CLACLS Travel Grant. My intention was to probe how civil society organizations have responded to the current climate of human rights abuses and disappearances since the launch of the Mexican Drug War in 2008. During my time,…

Over the course of two months in the late summer of 2015, I managed a project of archaeological mapping and excavation at the site of Muralla de León, a fortified Maya site along the shore of Lake Macanché in the Petén department of northern Guatemala. The CLACLS Fellowship funded my flights down and back, as…

Thanks in part to the CLACLS summer travel fellowship in 2015, I traveled to Colombia to conduct preliminary fieldwork towards my dissertation, which examines the intertwined processes of state formation and agribusiness expansion in the Colombian-Venezuelan Llanos. In particular, I analyze different disputes over the conception, use and property of state lands (from baldíos to…

Thanks in part to a CLACLS summer travel fellowship, I spent five weeks in Buenos Aires, Argentina conducting preliminary research towards my dissertation, which focuses on the politics of money and debt in the wake of dictatorships in this Southern Cone nation. I went with the purpose of talking to state officials, diplomats, lawyers, and…

Thanks to the CLACS Summer Travel Fellowship in 2014 I to traveled to Colombia and conducted preliminary fieldwork on my dissertation, which focuses in the conflicts and interactions between human rights advocates, grassroots organizations, aid agencies, NGOs and multilateral institutions for the creation of emblematic cases of human rights related to mining industries. During this…