Lassen Fellowships in Latin American Studies, 2010-2011
Ireri E Chávez-Bárcenas (Music)
Chávez-Bárcenas earned the B.A. in music from the University of the Americas-Pueblas, Mexico and the M.A.R. in music and religion from Yale University. Her fields of special interest include arts and history of the “New Spain Era”, Mexican music, 17th and 18th century opera, religious studies, and musical paleography and codicology. She is currently working on a research project of the original manuscript of Handel’s Performing Parts of Laudate Pueri Dominum at the Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Ruth Halvey (Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures)
Halvey earned the B.A. from Swarthmore College. Before beginning graduate school, she worked for the Chiapas Photography Project, an arts organization that provides camera equipment and basic photographic instruction to indigenous people in and around San Cristóbal de las Casas. Additionally, Halvey has collaborated on academic projects at the CIDE and Instituto Mora and taught English at the UNAM. Her research interests include contemporary Mexican literature and visual arts, particularly representations of urban and drug-related violence.
Peter Johannessen (Politics)
Johannessen earned the B.A. in political science and history from the University of Vermont, and also studied at the London School of Economics and Middlebury College. His senior thesis examined the relationship between democratic quality and economic development in South America, with a focus on the interplay between governance and foreign investment. His research interests include local governance, the political economy of development, and the relationship between democratic quality and scale.
Martín Marimón (History)
Marimón earned the B.A. in history from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has been part of several seminars and workshops on diverse topics of intellectual history at his home university, where he has done some research on European positivist thought, as well as developed a strong interest on Latin American intellectuals, with an emphasis on the relationship between intellectual élites and politics. He is planning to do research on late 19th century Latin American positivism, particularly on conceptions of race and national identity during the period of the formation of modern nation-states in different Latin American countries.
Gabriel López-Moctezuma (Politics)
López-Moctezuma earned the B.A. in economics and political science from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. Previously, he worked as an economist in the Economic Research Department at Banco de México where he conducted research on the efficiency of macroeconomic forecasts using survey data from professional forecasters. His research interests include the political economy of financial and monetary institutions, as well as the effects of internationally inspired volatility on domestic politics in developing countries.