Center for Latin American Studies, UC Berkeley

Visiting Scholars 2007-08

Each year CLAS sponsors an outstanding group of visiting scholars. The group ranges from area specialists to public intellectuals and practitioners. Visiting scholars give public talks and participate fully in the intellectual life at CLAS.

Visiting Professors

Sergio Aguayo, Mexico

Sergio Aguayo is a leading scholar and commentator on human rights in Mexico. He has been actively involved in the promotion of democracy and human rights through such organizations as Civic Alliance and the Mexican Academy of Human Rights. Professor Aguayo teaches at El Colegio de Mexico's Center for International Relations.

Senior Scholars

Maria Echaveste

Maria Echaveste is a Lecturer in Residence at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law and the co-founder of the Nueva Vista Group, a consulting firm that works with nonprofit organizations, associations and corporations on such issues as immigration, health care, telecommunications, labor and finances. From 1998 to 2001, Echaveste served as assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. She also specialized in international issues related to Latin America. From 1997 to 1998, Echaveste was director of the Office of Public Liaison at the White House and the administrator of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division from 1993 to 1997.

Kirsten Sehnbruch

Kirsten Sehnbruch is a Senior Scholar and Lecturer at the Center for Latin American Studies, UC Berkeley, where she is teaches Latin American development and labor markets. She worked as a consultant to the Chilean government on a range of issues related to employment policy, unemployment insurance and the pension system. Her book “The Chilean Labor Market: A Key to Understanding Latin American Labor Markets” was published by Palgrave Macmillan in September 2006 (click here to download an order form with a discount). Sehnbruch’s research interests focus on labor policies in Latin America, labor and social policies in Chile, and on applications of Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach. She originally received her PhD from the University of Cambridge. Currently, Sehnbruch is writing a book on Chile’s recent development process with Professor Gabriel Palma of Cambridge University.

See Dr. Sehnbruch's website for her publications.

Visiting Lecturer

Clara Ines Nicholls, Ph.D.

Clara Nicholls has taught "Perspectives on Sustainable Rural Development in Latin America" at UC Berkeley, Stanford University and Santa Clara University since 2002. She teaches future professionals involved in rural development to understand that the challenges of agriculture go beyond technical problems and include socioeconomic, environmental, cultural and political dimensions. Solutions may involve activities at all levels from local to international. Dr. Nicholls is deeply committed to participatory research, where farmers not only help shape the research agenda but also conduct and evaluate the research and use the results.

She is co-author of three books and more than 30 scientific articles on agroecology and rural development.

Research Associates

Jacqueline Adams
jacqueline_adams@berkeley.edu

Jacqueline Adams received her degrees from the University of Cambridge and the University of Essex, was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, and an assistant professor of sociology in Hong Kong for five years. She is currently writing a book for the University of Texas Press, Art and Human Rights: Women against Pinochet, focusing on the mothers of the disappeared and shantytown women in Pinochet's Chile and their protest through art. Her work has appeared in Sociological Quarterly, The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Qualitative Sociology, Sociological Perspectives, Sociological Forum, Sociological Inquiry, and the Journal of Comparative Family Studies.

Michele DeSando

Michele DeSando is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her dissertation Aesthetics and Citizenship: Women and Cultural Policy in Cuba examines how citizenship and feelings of belonging in Cuba are affected by the way that everyday life, development discourse and government policy combine to create a paradigm of who is a good citizen. This study is based on fieldwork with the women’s programs of a community development project in Havana and from training classes for cultural development workers at the Ministry of Culture. Desando is also finishing two articles on food and tourism in Cuba. After completing her doctorate she hopes to return to a project that examines the links between development organizations, the state and local AfroPeruvian women’s groups in Peru.

Beate Frank

Beate Frank is a professor at the University of Blumenau, in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, teaching in the graduate program in Environmental Engineering and the undergraduate program in Production Engineering. Her main activities are related to participative management of water resources, water basin councils, the Itajaí river basin and training for environmental management. She is the coordinator of the Piava Project which was proposed to develop a public policy for water protection in the Itajaí river basin (www.comiteitajai.org.br). She also takes part of the Marca Dagua Project which is working to monitor and evaluate the water councils in Brazil over the long term (www.marcadagua.org.br).

Héctor Perla Jr.

Héctor Perla Jr. is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Latin American Studies at Ohio University. He is currently on leave as a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow. During 2007–08 Dr. Perla will be a visiting scholar at CLAS, where he will be finishing his book manuscript entitled Revolutionary Deterrence: U.S. Coercion & Transnational Resistance by Sandinista Nicaragua. The book documents the strategies and tactics used by the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) to resist the Reagan Administration’s efforts to oust them from power. It traces the domestic, international and transnational strategies that Nicaraguans both at home and in the diaspora used to sway U.S. public opinion to oppose Reagan’s policy and deter him from escalating the conflict. Specifically, this includes analysis of transnational sub-state actors such as religious and secular NGOs, the Central American Diaspora and the Solidarity Movement in the U.S., as well as their impact on public opinion, media framing of the conflict and government officials’ decision-making.