Meet our network
![Workshop mapping with group of people](/media/Media_1069945_smxx.jpg)
Irene Piedrahita Arcila
I am an anthropologist with a master’s degree in political science from the University of Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia. I am studying for a PhD in Politics & IR at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and I am a lecturer at the Institute of Political Studies at the University of Antioquia. I have worked as a researcher on the armed conflict at the Colombian Truth Commission, working with narratives of victims and perpetrators. I am also interested in reflective and participatory methodologies oriented to memory work, narratives, and oral history.
Interest in Latin America: Memory, narratives, peacebuilding, Colombia, civil wars, and armed conflicts
![Staff profile picture](/media/Media_1070581_smxx.jpg)
Matt Barlow
Matt Barlow is Lecturer in International Political Economy at the University of Glasgow, and he is a Research Fellow at IBEI, Barcelona, Spain. His research interests are in the political economy of taxation, political economy of development and the global governance of development. His research is situated in two regions of the global South: Latin America and Africa, and explores themes of tax ideologies, sociology of the developing state, political economy of gender and regionalism. He has twice been a visiting researcher at the Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Previously, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of International Development at King’s College London. Before this he was an Associate Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of York where he was awarded his PhD. During this time, he also worked as a research associate in the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre at the University of York where he was part of a team working with academic and civil society partners across a number of funded projects: GCRF-RCUK funded Thanzi la Onse (Health for All), GCRF funded Gender and Health Systems After Covid-19: The Role of Policy and the GCRF funded The natural resources economy in South America: Extraction, Sustainability and Citizenship.
![Profile pic](/media/Media_1069962_smxx.png)
Luz Cáceres
Luz (she/her/ella) is a third-year doctoral researcher in theatre studies and an associate fellow of the Higher Education Academy. With over ten years of teaching experience, Luz has served as a Spanish language tutor, a year abroad convener, a student advisor and a graduate teaching assistant. Luz is currently researching testimonial theatre of resistance and democratic practices in civil society in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. She leverages interdisciplinarity and radical ethnography to engage with decolonising research methodologies. Her Ph.D. project is funded by SGSAH and co-supervised in collaboration between the University of Glasgow and Stirling University. When she is not working on her thesis, you can find Luz cooking delicious and sustainable recipes or taking part in community food security actions in Glasgow.
luz.cacerespaton@glasgow.ac.uk
@luzpapaya
![Profile pic](/media/Media_1069964_smxx.jpg)
Lloyd Belton
Lloyd is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Humanities where he researches and teaches on the history of colonialism and imperialism in Latin America and West Africa. His current project looks at the economic networks, political associations and social lives of West African sailors in the wider Atlantic world, including in the British, French, Spanish and Portuguese empires (ca. 1750-1900). Separately, he is finalising his first monograph entitled A Deep Interest in Your Cause: The Inter-American Sphere of Black Abolitionism and Civil Rights (under contract with LSU Press), which examines the lives and work of Black Latin American and Caribbean activists in the nineteenth-century United States. Prior to Glasgow, Lloyd completed his PhD in History at the University of Leeds.
Interest in Latin America: Cuba; Brazil; slavery and abolition; the Atlantic slave trade; race and resistance.
![Profile pic](/media/Media_1069963_smxx.jpeg)
Alejandra Vovides
I hold a PhD in Ecology and natural resources management and develop my research in coastal ecosystems, spanning a wide array of topics, from environmental microbiology, hydrodynamics and biogeomorphology to morphological plasticity, plant interactions and ecological modelling. The final aim is to gain a mechanistic understanding of how coastal ecosystems function. A mechanistic understanding of ecosystem function can further inform Nature-based solutions and community-led restoration & conservation, where I also contribute by developing low-cost monitoring tools and identifying practical and reliable indicators of ecosystem restoration that can be readily available for local managers.
Latin America and the Caribbean region host 26% of the worlds mangroves, preceded only by South and Southeast Asia (~44%), making Latin America’s coastlines specially valuable for the ecosystem services (ESS), potentially contributing to at least 6 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (i.e., Ending poverty, Zero hunger, Climate action and biodiversity, amongst others). Adding to the SDG, the “UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030”, the pledge to “Halt deforestation” signed in COP26, and the “Mangrove Breakthrough” launched during COP28, has stimulated both Colombia and Mexico to set ambitious mangrove restoration goals along 12 other Latin America & Caribbean countries. With current restoration success rates of ~20%, mechanistic understanding of ecosystem function along with community ownership is needed to better pan restoration.
![Profile pic](/media/Media_1069966_smxx.jpg)
Allan Gillies
I joined the School of Social and Political Sciences in April 2021 as Lecturer in Global Economy. My research examines the political economies of transnational illicit commodities in Latin America. I interrogate the intersections of illicit economies with processes of state-making and conflict, political transition, socio-environmental crises, and the livelihood strategies of marginalised communities. My work intervenes in debates around the causes of drug violence in Latin America, state development, democracy and the dynamics of socio-environmental conflict. I have conducted extensive fieldwork in Bolivia and Colombia, using oral history interviews, archival sources and participatory methods to map illicit economies and their effects.
Interests in Latin America: the politics of illicit economies; socio-environmental conflicts; and football!