UCL Institute of the Americas

UCL-Institute of the Americas is pleased to announce the publication, to great acclaim, of the latest book edited by Kate Quinn, 'Black Power in the Caribbean' (Gainesville, 2014).

UCL-Institute of the Americas is pleased to announce its participation in the UCL Graduate Support Scheme 2014. The scheme continues UCL’s tradition of making high quality education accessible. UCL was founded in 1826 to open up education in England for the first time to students of any background. It was also the first university to welcome female students on equal terms with men.

Listen to Monocle Radio's program on the occasion of the Obama-Harper-Pena Nieto meeting held in Toluca, Mexico, on February 19, with the participation of Prof Middlebrook (ten minutes into the program).

UCL - Institute of the Americas (UCL-IA) is delighted to announce the Santander Universities Award of a £5,000 scholarship for our MA and MSc Programmes. This award is for International Students applying from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Uruguay in September 2014. To be considered for this scheme, candidates must apply to any of our MA/MSc programmes by March 1 2004. Results will be announced on March 15 2014. Read more about this opportunity here.

The staff of UCL-Institute of the Americas are deeply saddened to learn of the death of Stuart Hall (3 February 1932 – 10 February 2014). Although his work has had a profound effect on studies of the Caribbean, Stuart Hall had reservations at being described as 'a Caribbean intellectual'. At a conference held in his honour in his native Jamaica in 2004, he confessed, 'My work has not been largely about the Caribbean. I have not been actively present in the enormously important work of trying to write the history of the Caribbean and Caribbean societies in the period of independence ... I am Caribbean in the most banal sense, in the sense that I was born here'. Yet while Hall rejected the 'naturalistic logic' implicit in the designation ('he was born here, so he must be a Caribbean intellectual'), he acknowledged that 'although in many moments of my life I have been thinking about what many people in the Caribbean would think of as other problems, other places, other dilemmas, it seems to me I have always been doing so through what I can only call the prism of my Caribbean formation'.

UCL - Institute of the Americas is delighted to announce that it has been granted a total of £34,000 in fee awards available for outstanding candidates to undertake a Masters from our suite of programmes. The awards are available for a September 2014 start, for both full-time and part-time students.

UCL-Institute of the Americas is pleased to announce it welcomes fellowship applications through the Newton International Fellowships scheme. Please find more information here.

February sees four major public events hosted by the Eccles Centre for American Studies in the British Library Conference Centre. 

We are very pleased to invite applications for a UCL-IA/BAAS Visiting Fellow in US Studies for academic year 2014-15, to be based at UCL-Institute of the Americas. More information here. Closing date: February 14, 2014.

UCL - Institute of the Americas is delighted to announce the award of two new studentships for outstanding candidates to undertake a Masters from our suite of programmes. The awards are available for a September 2014 start.

The UCL Institute of the Americas is delighted to announce that Dr Paulo Drinot, Senior Lecturer in Latin American History, has been appointed joint editor of the Journal of Latin American Studies, published by Cambridge University Press. Established in 1969, the Journal of Latin American Studies is one of the leading journals in the field. We warmly congratulate Dr Drinot on this achievement.

One of our missions at UCL Institute of the Americas is to highlight the presence, the importance and the cultural and social impact of the Latin American community in London and the UK, and to foster dialogue and knowledge exchange with and between the different communities of the Americas. It has been our privilege to collaborate with the London Latin American Film Festival (LLAFF) since 2012.  For the Festival’s 2013 edition, we were glad to host the screening of two of this year’s films: ‘We Women Warriors’ (Dir. Nicole Karsin , USA/Colombia 2012) and ‘Unseen Colombia’ (Dir. Unai Aranzad, Colombia/Spain, 2012) on November 22, both to full-house attendance and great acclaim.

The UCL Institute of the Americas is delighted to announce the award of its masters dissertation prizes.

The prize for the best dissertation on a Latin American and Caribbean topic was awarded to:

Congratulations to Dr Dylan Vernon, former research student at the Institute of the Americas, who has recently been appointed Belizean Ambassador to the European Union. Dylan completed his PhD on Clientelism and Democracy in the Modern Politics of Belize at the Institute, under the supervision of Prof Kevin Middlebrook, in July 2013. He takes up his post in Brussels on Monday and in the coming months will also be accredited as Belize's representative to the World Trade Organisation and as non-resident ambassador to several European state. We wish him every success in his career.

Professor Martin Halliwell has become the first holder of the newly-established ‘John Maynard Keynes Fellowship in US Studies’ at University College London's Institute of the Americas.

Listen here to Prof Kevin Middlebrook's radio interview on Brazilian President Roussef's decision to postpone her state visit to the US, pending clarification of US secret interception of her electronic communications and communications involving Petrobras.

These awards are for International Students applying for entry from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Uruguay in 2013, for the following programmes:

Listen to Prof Middlebrook's radio interview to Voice of Russia on the implications to Latin-America - Europe relations after the diversion suffered by the aircraft carrying Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, on July 3, due to the refusal of various European countries to allow his airplane to enter their airspace.

The UCL Institute of the Americas is pleased to announce it is now accepting applications for the new MSc in International Relations of the Americas. This new MSc programme is uniquely focused on the international relations of the Americas in their entirety.  No other course anywhere else offers a comparable opportunity to study and research the foreign policies of this continent. The hemisphere is home to the world's most important power and a number of emergent powers.  The nation-states within it confront geopolitical, geo-economic, environmental, human rights, and international drug control issues that have global significance.  They are also engaged in a pivot away from a traditional Atlantic focus to an Asia-Pacific one that will have immense significance in shaping the power structure of the twenty-first century world.  This is a programme that will benefit anyone looking to develop a career in diplomacy, the media, think-tank research, international organizations, and commerce.

In a packed Gustave Tuck lecture theatre after Professor Iwan Morgan's Inaugural Lecture, Professor Stephen Conway (Head of the Department of History at UCL) announced that University College London has awarded the Commonwealth Fund Professorship in American History to Professor Iwan Morgan.

The Government of Ecuador has announced that Dr Guillaume Long has been named Minister of Knowledge and Human Talent.Dr Long completed his MA and PhD while a student of the staff now at UCL - Institute of the Americas (UCL-IA).

UCL Institute of the Americas (UCL-IA) is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a prestigious Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship for Professor Roberto Gargarella (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Argentina).

UCL-IA is pleased to announce two new publications to the Palgrave Macmillan series Studies of the Americas.

In Politics and Power in Haiti Kate Quinn and Paul Sutton examine the political legacies of the Duvalier period.

photo copyright: P Pepper

Listen to the recording of the presentations and discussion that took place over the seminar that UCL-Institute of the Americas (UCL-IA) held on March 20 on this divisive topic. The panel consisted of Prof Peter Willetts (City University, London; far right on image) and Prof Hal Klepak (Royal Military College of Canada and UCL-IA; far left on image); Fernando Iglesias (author, academic, journalist and politician; second from left). The panel was chaired by Celia Szusterman, Director of the Latin America Programme, The Institute for Statecraft, and Associate Fellow, UCL - Institute of the Americas.

Listen to Prof Kevin Middlebrook's interview to South African radio news program on the recent demise of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.