We are pleased to welcome Helen Yaffe, who will join the School as a Economic and Social History Lecturer in January. Helen is an economic historian specialising in Cuba and Latin America, the history of economics, and the political economy of late development. She has also worked in human geography and development studies, giving her multidisciplinary expertise. At the LSE, Dr Yaffe’s teaching focused on the history of economics and how theories change.

Her doctorate was on the least known aspect of one of the 20th centuries best-known icons: Ernesto Che Guevara. It analysed his economic work as a member of Cuba’s revolutionary government, and his contribution to socialist political economy debates. Subsequently published as Che Guevara: the Economics of Revolution (Palgrave Macmillan) it has been translated into several languages. Helen has continued to follow developments in Cuba and is currently researching Cuba’s economic reforms and rapprochement with the United States, and the international drivers behind both these processes. She often appears on the mainstream media to discuss these developments.

Her second book, Youth Activism and Solidarity: the Non-Stop Picket against Apartheid, co-authored by Dr Gavin Brown in the Geography Department at the University of Leicester, has just been published. 

First published: 7 December 2017

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