Flávia Leite, a 2025–26 CLACS Graduate Affiliate, writes about her research on Brazil's public housing program Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV, My Home My Life). How do people in a program providing nearly free housing end up facing more debt and evictions?
Waiting for the Ark
Anna Feign's research at the Walter Rodney National Archives in Guyana explores the intersections of extractivism and climate change. Promises that growth in the oil industry would fuel economic prosperity have gone unfulfilled, and the country's development has tended to serve the industry, rather than the other way around.
Ella me enseñó trova, yo aprendí sobre la revolución y educación
Rafa Meza Duriez revisita la Campaña de Alfabetización de Nicaragua a través del legado de su madre para ofrecer un homenaje al amor maternal, la música folclórica latinoamericana y el poder silencioso de la lucha intergeneracional.
She Taught Me Trova, I Learned About the Revolution and Education
Rafa Meza Duriez revisits the Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign through his mother's legacy to offer a tribute to maternal love, Latin American folk music, and the quiet power of intergenerational struggle.
Caribbean Artists Between the Islands
Leo Dunsker found his research on Wilson Harris, Kamau Brathwaite, and other Caribbean writers drawing him to England and archives of a research institute located above a bookstore in London.
Sometimes You Just Have to Be There: Investigations Using Government Files in Colombia
Lily Medina documents some of the bureaucratic obstacles one has to face and overcome to do research with government documents.
Field Work and the Spectacular Mundane
Franchesca Araújo, doing research in Santo Domingo, discusses how experiencing the sanitized and touristic Zona Colonial side-by-side with less insulated life in other parts of the city helps to texture her research.
Fotos Desaparecidas
Emily Fjaellen Thompson highlights the photographers whose work was presented in the series Fotos Desaparecidas as they documented Peru's Internal Armed Conflict.
Everyday Use of Plants in Pre-Hispanic Costa Rica
By Venicia Slotten Arenal Volcano viewed from the archaeological site La Chiripa. (Photo by Venicia Slotten). This July, supported by a Tinker Foundation and CLAS-funded research grant, I helped excavate a house structure in Costa Rica that was preserved by the eruption of Arenal Volcano around 3,500 years ago. This archaeological site, La Chiripa, is... Continue Reading →
Venezuela: On the Supreme Court in Exile and the Violation of Human Rights
By Eleni Anagnostopoulou Associate Justice Domingo Salgado explains the legal basis for the Venezuela's Supreme Court of Justice in Exile and its inner workings. (Photo courtesy of the Berkeley Law special committee). “This fight is not about ideology. It is about democratic, constitutional legitimacy.” These were the first words uttered to the crowd in a packed auditorium... Continue Reading →
