Research Students

Verena Brähler

The Inequality of Security in Rio de Janeiro

This research elaborates a new concept called the “Inequality of Security” which shows how security is a societal good and human right that is inequitably distributed among Rio de Janeiro’s different social classes and geographic areas. The most important variable to consider for the Inequality of Security concept are the security providers – namely armed forces, police, UPPs, private security companies, drug trafficking factions and militias. Organised in a complex security network, these state and non-state actors deploy violence in multiple forms for their economic and political ends, forcing us to reconsider notions of citizenship and the rule of law.

Richard Dotor

The Southern Policy of Ulysses S. Grant

My thesis is a revisionist history of the Southern policy of Ulysses S. Grant. Focussing almost entirely on the Grant Papers, my intention it to account for policy choices, and define Grant's Southern policy, primarily through an interpretation and analysis of his own words. My thesis analyses issues along racial and political lines so as to account for key policy choices made by Grant. Each chapter focuses on a specific stage in his public career linking personal beliefs or political aims to specific actions. By following a chronological order my thesis identifies a certain evolution within the policy but also emphasises a continuation of Civil War era ideals.

Sarah Fearn

Finding Voice? Indigenous Political Participation and Institutional Continuity and Change in Peru

My PhD thesis is a comparative study of indigenous political participation in Peru. It aims to demonstrate the pattern of indigenous political participation at the sub-national level, taking the Andean departments of Huancavelica and Puno and the Amazonian department of Loreto as case studies. It then attempts to explain this pattern using a tri-dimensional analysis that looks at state-indigenous relationships, intermediary-indigenous relationships and local community relationships in the three regions. Peru is chosen as a ‘deviant case’ due to its less evident ethnically based political participation compared to the recent political history in neighbouring countries such as Ecuador and Bolivia.

Geoff Goodwin

The ‘double movement’ in the Andes: agrarian reform & indigenous development in highland Ecuador, 1964-2006

My research investigates the evolution of agrarian reform and land commodification in Highland Ecuador and explores the socioeconomic consequences of these processes for the indigenous peoples of the region. Drawing on Karl Polanyi’s concept of the “double movement”, I argue the orientation and application of state and market based agrarian reform provided few opportunities for indigenous peoples to secure productive plots of land and embedded existing inequalities in the agrarian structure. My analysis calls into question studies which posit structural adjustment and neoliberalism as the principal factors behind the upsurge of indigenous mobilisation in Ecuador during the 1990s and 2000s.

Sam Kelly

Ethnic voting in the Andes

My research focuses on the role of ethnicity, race and racism in contemporary Andean politics. Specifically, I am interested in how ethnic identity and racial attitudes may influence voters’ electoral decision-making – the ways in which voters construct, and evaluate, socio-political profiles of electoral candidates, their parties and political projects during electoral campaigns – and how such (stereotypic) profiles, or images, impact on voters’ electoral preferences. It is hoped that the combination of ‘macro-level’ cross-country comparative analysis (largely based on existing survey data) with a more ‘micro-level’ investigation of how voters gather and process political information (drawing on data from a computer-based ‘election simulation’ and a series of focus groups and interviews), will provide important insights into how (and perhaps why) race and ethnicity are drawn into, and may shape, electoral politics in the region today.

Thomas Maier

The Shape of the State to Come: Transnationality and the Social Imaginary of the Welfare State in Argentina, 1930-1952

My research focuses on the social imagery of the welfare-state in Argentina between 1930 and 1952. I am particularly interested in the productive space between the knowledge production in the social sciences of the time, and the political realm across the whole political spectrum in issues of welfare and the regulation of the social. Additionally, I will focus on the transnationality of the discourse about the formation of a modern welfare state in Argentina. Both the diffusion of ideas about modern social policy from different, nationally organized societies, the translations of concepts and debates about the relevance for the Argentine reality, as well as the mobility of social actors in the Atlantic world are of interest.

Robbie Macrory

A Debt to Democracy? Media Regulation and Reform in Argentina and the Southern Cone

My research investigates recent controversial changes to media regulation in Argentina, and I am interested in what such reforms may tell us about the current relationship between the state, media and the consolidation of democracy in the region. I will be undertaking fieldwork in the 2012-2013 academic year, basing myself in Buenos Aires, where I plan to interview government officials, academics, and those working in the media to better understand the political environment in which regulatory reform is taking place, and the potential implications of this reform for democracy in Argentina.

Shirley Pemberton

Migration and Return: A St. Kitts-Nevis Perspective

My research aims to discover how people migrate and re-migrate into societies and how integration is facilitated at both destinations along the cycle of migration: in Britain and in St. Kitts-Nevis. The thesis investigates the support network created among migrants in Britain and considers the role of informal and formal institutions, such as the associations and the churches, in bringing about such adjustment. In exploring the adaptation of St. Kitts-Nevis migrants to Britain and on their return to the home country, the thesis touches on issues of integration and assimilation, issues of home and belonging, identity and transnationalism.

Carmen G. Sepulveda Zelaya

The Legal and Political Battles Behind the Distribution of Emergency Contraception in Chile under Ricardo Lagos (2000-2005) and Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010)

My research focuses on the legal and political battles behind the distribution of emergency contraception in Chile -- under the Concertación governments of Ricardo Lagos (2000-2005) and Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010). I am interested in the role of institutions and actors in the policy process, particularly feminists, lawyers, and doctors, as well as judges and courts within a context of increasing judicialisation of women’s reproductive rights. I believe my research contributes to current debates on feminist political science and sociology of law. My thematic interests include: feminism, women’s movements, sexual and reproductive rights, gender and health, abortion, public health, democratisation, judicialisation processes.

Alejandra Serpente

Diasporic Argentinean and Chilean identities in Britain: The traces of dictatorship in second-generation postmemory

My PhD looks at second-generation Chileans and Argentineans living in the UK, and their postmemories contained within their personal life narratives in relation to the last military dictatorships in those countries. It argues that within these individual memories formed in a familial terrain, we can also trace the contours of a much more collective memory that reflects a different and alternative memory landscape to that found in the Southern Cone. My research interests are in intergenerational memory, diasporic identities, exile, gender, oral history, and migration.

Juan Venegas

Chilean Youth Political Disaffection: Analyzing its historical trends and its associated factors

This research aims to explain current high levels of political disaffection among Chilean youth. Since the return to democracy in 1990 Chile has experienced good levels of both economic development and political stability. However, with the pass of years the youth have increased their levels of hostility towards formal political institutions. Moreover, in recent times these feelings of disaffection have begun to be expressed through strong social movements. This dissertation intends to understand this problematic situation through both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the relationship between youth and the Chilean political system taking into account current popular mobilizations.

Dylan Vernon

The Making of a Patronage Democracy: The Nature and Implications of Rampant Political Clientelism in Post-Independence Belize

Using Belize as an illustrative and critical national case study, the thesis revisits the modern politics and democratisation experiences of the Commonwealth Caribbean through the analytic lens of entrenched political clientelism. It explores the origins of political clientelism in Belize since adult suffrage and the emergence of political parties in the 1950s, tracks and explains its rapid expansion and persistence in the post-independence (1981) period, and critically assesses the implications presented for democratic governance in Belize and other small states of the Commonwealth Caribbean. The research project is being conducted with the support of a United Kingdom Commonwealth Scholarship.

Anthony Teitler

US Foreign Policy Towards Afghanistan: Political Culture, Stability and Violence

This study aims to further the study of US Foreign Policy in Afghanistan by explicating the factors that make up US identity and how this plays a role in the relationship between these two countries. A key motivational factor for being in Kabul has been to stabilise the country and have a regime that is friendly to US interests. At the same time, the US view of itself as a great power that is principled and determined to create a better global order, with Washington at the forefront, is also an important determinant for why it has stayed in Afghanistan. Therefore, both factors of interest and identity and how they mutually constitute one another will be key in driving the research process.

Michael J Espinoza

The Winning Combination: Conservatives and Socialism in Post-Cold War America

My PhD thesis focuses on conservative Republican criticism of Democrats in post-Cold War America. From the conservative perspective, Democrats support policies that favour government over the free-market. Conservative rhetoric uses key words to further bolster their assertions. This rhetoric accuses Democrats of supporting core ideals which are liberal, socialist and un-American in their tendencies. The intent of conservatives is to portray their party as the party that will defend true and authentic American values against the liberal values of big government Democrats. In each chapter I analyse how Republican conservatism now embodies a movement that is much more flexible and extremist in its language, and as a result makes modern day Democrats (and even Republicans of previous eras) out to be supporters of socialism.

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