Jacqueline Adams is a sociologist whose Latin American research is on art and political protest. She is writing a book about the role of art in resistance to the Pinochet dictatorship. The book focuses on working class women and their arpilleras, denunciatory pictures in cloth which were exported and came to symbolize the resistance effort, depicting as they did human rights violations, poverty and unemployment. Prior to coming to the Center for Latin American Studies, Adams worked as an assistant professor of sociology in Hong Kong for five years.

Ana Cara is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Hispanic Studies at Oberlin College . A folklorist by training, Dr. Cara is interested in the relationship among traditional culture, music and literature. Her work at CLAS focused on Jorge Luis Borges’ milonga poems and the popular/folk Argentine tradition upon which these song verses are modeled as well as the theoretical issues related to creolization in Latin America and the Caribbean . She is the co-editor of the forthcoming volume Creolization: Cultural Creativity in Process.

Kent Eaton

Kent Eaton is Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. A political scientist by training, Dr. Eaton is interested in political institutions and comparative political economy. He is the author of Politicians and Economic Reform in New Democracies and Politics beyond the Capital: The Design of Subnational Institutions in South America. Currently Dr. Eaton is conducting research on police reform and on the relationship between decentralization and security in Latin America.

Luiz Fernando Macedo Bessa

Luiz Fernando Macedo Bessa is Professor of Environmental Planning and Management at the Catholic University of Brasília. He received his Ph.D. in Human Geography and Organization from the Space University of Paris, Panthéon, Sorbonne , France . Since September 2005 he has been studying sustainable governance mechanisms for socio-environmental conflict resolution at the University of California , Berkeley . Prof. Macedo Bessa’s focus is on the occupation of the Brazilian Cerrado (or Savannah region), emphasizing governance mechanisms which environmental management debates in the region have largely ignored.

Kirsten Sehnbruch
Kirsten Sehnbruch has just completed her Ph.D. on the Chilean Labor Market at Cambridge University. She has spent the last five years researching the labor market in Chile and has worked as a consultant to the Chilean government on a range of issues related to the labor market, the new unemployment insurance and the pension system.

She presented a discussion on the Chilean labor market as part of the Bay Area Latin American Forum this spring.

Lavinia Barros de Castro, Brazil

Lavinia Barros de Castro is an economist at the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) and teaches Brazilian Economic History at the Brazilian Institute of Capital Markets (IBMEC), Rio de Janeiro. She is a doctoral student in social sciences in the Post-Graduate Program in Development, Agriculture and Society at the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (CPDA – UFRRJ) and has recently written and organized a book on Brazilian economic history (2004). Currently, she is doing research for her dissertation on investment finance in economic development, comparing the evolution of the Brazilian and Korean financial systems during the period 1960–2000.

Marta Maria Gomes de Oliveira, Brazil

Marta Maria Gomes de Oliveira works as an Environmental Analyst for the Secretariat of the Environment in Brasília, where she has worked as Manager of Environmental Inspection and Licensing, coordinated the elaboration and execution of the Federal District’s Forest Fire Prevention and Combat Plan and coordinated the project “Sustainable Development: A Database for the Federal District.” While in Berkeley , she plans to study theories of Green Governance and how they are being implemented in countries such as Nigeria and Indonesia as well as conduct preliminary research for the definition of her dissertation proposal.