Graduate Students

Student Profiles

Andy Alfonso
Spanish & Portuguese

Research Interests: Cuba, the Caribbean, Latin American art, politics and literature.

Andy’s research has focused on the system of labor camps established in Cuba from 1965 to 1968. Often referred to as UMAP (Military Units to Aid Production) these camps served as “re-education” centers for select personae non gratae, who were forced…

Jarome Ali
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Research Interests: Ecology and evolution of bird colouration.

Beatriz Barros
Politics

Research Interests: Electoral politics, public goods provision and healthcare in Latin America.

Beatriz is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at Princeton University.  She received her BA in Sociology and Government from Cornell University in 2017.

Angela Brown
Art & Archaeology

Research Interests: ephemera, nontraditional archives, and popular media; transnational artistic movements; dance and film; especially in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Mexico.

Angela H. Brown is a Ph.D. candidate with particular interests in modern craft traditions, artisanal labor, and rural/campesino pedagogies in the Caribbean and Latin…

Alonso Burgos
Comparative Literature

Research Interests: Mexico in the 20th and 21st centuries, Violence and Representation, Literary Realism, Documentation and the Archive, Theories of the Contemporary, Memory Studies, State and Nation.

Alonso is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature working on the forms of realism and the…

Certificate Student
Vinicius Cardoso Reis
Anthropology

Research interests: political and economic anthropology, statecraft, uncertainty, temporalities, crises and disasters.

Vinicius Cardoso Reis is a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology. He holds a master’s degree in sociology from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) and a degree in law from Fundacao…

Alvaro Carril
Economics

Research Interests: Reduce inequalities and improve the efficiency of education-related markets in developing countries, including Colombia, Peru and Chile.

Claudia Cervantes Perez
Politics

Research Interests: Intergenerational distributive justice, theories of global and climate justice, multiculturalism, race, and the ethics of immigration, with a special emphasis on the particular normative issues that these topics present for Mexico and Latin America.

Claudia is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Politics…

Elise Chagas
Art & Archaeology

Research Interests: Politics of aesthetics; representation; regimes of value; modernity; historiography.

Elise Y. Chagas is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Art & Archaeology studying modern and contemporary art with a focus on Latin America. Her dissertation concerns Peruvian modern art as it relates to indigenism, a pan…

Santiago Conti
History

Research Interests: Colonial Latin America / Modern Latin America / Indigenous History / Popular politics / Frontiers.

Santiago Conti is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History and holds a B.A. in history from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), Argentina. He has done research on encomiendas in the governorship of…

Constanza Dalla Porta
History

Research interests: The modern history of Latin America and Chile within a global landscape of human rights struggles. Her doctoral dissertation project is a study of impunity and its role in shaping social, political, and cultural developments in post-conflict societies.

During her career, Dalla Porta has received a Comisión…

Isabele DeSisto
Politics

Research Interests: Social movements, migration, and regime types in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, and Cuba.

Alex Diaz-Hui
English

Research Interests: Focus on modern and contemporary poetry and music from Latin America and the Caribbean, with a particular interest in the Greater Antilles.

Haris A. Durrani
History

Research Interests: How the history of science intersects with law, resources, and the so-called global south. 

Dylan Blau Edelstein
Spanish & Portuguese

Research Interests: Brazilian studies, modernism, mental health, theater, queer studies, translation.

Originally from New York City, Dylan Blau Edelstein is a PhD student in the Spanish and Portuguese Department, with a broad interest in 20th-century Brazil and Latin America. He holds a B.A. from Princeton ('17), also in Spanish…

Dante Furioso
History and Theory of Architecture

Research Interests: History of architecture, construction history, labor history, colonial history, nineteenth-century Atlantic history

Dante is a scholar and architect with a varied professional background including undergraduate studies in Latin American history, and work in historic restoration, fabrication, and publishing. His…

Certificate Student
Gabrielle Girard
History

Research Interests: Argentina, human rights and political transition during the late 20th century.

Julian Gonzalez
Architecture

Research Interests: Architectural discourse between the built environment and nature in the Latin American region and Latino community in the northeast.

Angelika Joseph
History & Theory of Architecture

Research Interests: Joseph’s research explores colonial-Indigenous architectural interaction on reservations, focusing on Native American reconciliation of colonial trauma, and the reinterpretation, or reversal, of existing power structures in the interest of Indigenous sovereignty.

Wyatt Leaf
Comparative Literature

Research Interests: Avant-garde literature, modernismo, experimental fiction, poetics, aestheticism, formalist criticism, 19th- & 20th-century Hispanic American Literature.

Rodney Lebrón Rivera
Spanish & Portuguese

Research Interests: The relationship between history and literature, theory of history in dialogue with literary theory and Intellectual History in Latin American and the Caribbean.

Anaís Martinez Jimenez
Comparative Literature

Research Interests: Psychoanalysis, Poetic Theory, Border Studies, Gender and Sexuality, Critical Theory, Art History, Modernism, Surrealism.

Anaís Martinez Jimenez is a PhD candidate with the Department of Comparative Literature and a psychoanalyst in training at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis. In her…

Elis Mendoza
Architecture

Research Interests: Architecture experimentation, human rights, post-conflict cities.

Cate Morley
Anthropology

Research Interests: Forced disappearance; humanitarian forensic intervention; Mexico.

Cate Morley is a doctoral candidate in Anthropology and the Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities (IHUM). Her research concerns forced disappearance and humanitarian forensic intervention in Mexico, and is shaped, in particular, by attention to…

Isabela Muci Barradas
Art & Archaeology

Research Interests: History of photography, modern and contemporary art from Latin America.

Isabela is a Ph.D. candidate focusing on modern and contemporary art from Latin America as well as the history of photography. Her dissertation examines photographic practices in the Amazon during the 1970s and 1980s that use&nbsp…

John Paniagua
History

Research Interests: Colonial Caribbean, Amerindians and Atlantic Empires.

Manuel F. Perez Archila
Economics

Research interests: Economic and Financial History of Latin America, International Macroeconomics, History of the International Financial System, Debt and Capital Flows to Emerging Economies, Critical Finance, Political Economy of Latin America, Colombian Studies.

Manuel F. Pérez Archila is a Ph.D. student in the Economics department…

Certificate Student
Daniel Persia
Spanish & Portuguese

Research Interests: Translation; Ethics & Technology; Afro-Latin American Literatures; Poetry; International Education.

Daniel Persia is a PhD candidate in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese. His research takes translation to be a vital tool for reimagining the humanities, showing how collaboration within and beyond the…

Paulina Pineda
Comparative Literature

Research Interest: The contribution of indigenous language revitalization efforts to approach ecosystem loss, extinction and the effects of pollution in Mexico.

 

 

Pablo Pryluka
History

Research Interests: Argentina, Brazil, Chile; History of Development, Economic History, History of Consumption, History of Advertising, Global History.

Camila Reyes Alé
Architecture

Research Interests: US-Latin America Exchanges, Circulation Practices, Material Techniques and Culture, Cultural and Visual Studies, Institutional History, Modernization, Decoloniality.

Arantxa Rodriguez-Uribe
Politics

Research Interests: Organized Crime, Conflict, Political Economy of Development, Behavioral Science. 

Arantxa Rodriguez-Uribe is a fellow at Quantitative and Analytical Political Science (QAPS) and a member of Research on Policing Reform and Accountability (RoPRA). Her research interests include organized crime, conflict,…

Sebastián Rojas Cabal
Sociology

Research Interests: Urban violence in Colombia.

Amanda Savagian
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Research Interests: Animal communication in complex social groups; specifically, vocal communication in a cooperatively breeding bird in Panama.

Fatima Siwaju
Anthropology

Research Interests: The intersections of religion, race and national identity, particularly as they relate to Afro-descendant Muslim communities in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Maria Smith
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Research Interests: Greater Ani, Panama, Breeding Group Members, Division of Labor, Workload Inequality, Parental Synchronization, Parental Care, Reproductive Success.

Maria Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Before beginning graduate school at Princeton, Maria earned her bachelor's in…

Marie Testa Alvarez
Architecture

Research Interests: The ephemeral, theater, public space.

Federico Tiberti
Politics

Research Interests: Political regime change.

Julie Tierney
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Research Interests: Plant-microbial symbioses and nutrient cycling in the white-sands forests of the Peruvian Amazon.

María José Urzúa Valverde
Politics

Research Interests: Foreign policies of Latin America, its regional institutions, and human rights at the intersection of domestic and international politics.

María José specializes in International Relations and Comparative Politics, with a regional focus on Latin America. She holds a master’s degree in Politics from Princeton…

Jessica Womack
Art & Archaeology

Research Interests: Modern and contemporary art from the Caribbean, Afro-Diasporic religions, race, and visual culture and nation building.

Alumni Update

Will Freeman (Politics) joined the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as a Fellow for Latin America Studies in 2023. At CFR, Will is developing a book manuscript on the relationship between rule of law and democracy in Latin America over the past two decades. He continues to write on current events in the region for a broad audience. His commentary and analysis has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Economist, the Journal of Democracy, the Washington Post, Current History, and Americas Quarterly, where he is a contributing columnist. Will also organizes Latin America-focused roundtables with guest speakers from the region.

Ingrid Brioso Rieumont (Spanish & Portuguese) was awarded the 2021-2022 Dean's Completion Fellowship/PGRA Program. The honorific fellowship provides support for dissertation completion to doctoral students who demonstrate the highest scholarly excellence. In addition, she translated and edited the book, Paletó y yo. Memorias de mi padre indígena (2021), by Aparecida Vilaça, winner of the 2020 Casa de las Américas Literary Prize and was named a juror of the 63rd Casa de las Américas Literary Prize in Cuba. The prestigious award has served as a beacon for literature, art, and culture throughout Latin America since 1960.