Honorary and Visiting Academics

If you are interested in applying to become a Visiting or Affiliate academic at UCL Institute of the Americas, please consult UCL’s Affiliate Academic Scheme webpage. Your application should be address to the Director of Research, Prof Jonathan Bell. Please mention in your application if there is a particular member of Institute staff that you would like to work with during your visit.

Current Honorary and Visiting Academics

Professor Dr Clara Burbano Herrera

Visiting Fellow

Professor Dr Clara Burbano Herrera is Full Professor and Director of the Programme for Studies of Human Rights in Context at the Faculty of Law and Criminology at Ghent University (Belgium). She leads an ERC Consolidator Grant project (IMPACTUM), which examines urgent measures adopted by international human rights bodies to protect persons deprived of liberty in six Latin American countries.

Her research interests focus on international human rights law, with particular emphasis on the role of international human rights bodies in the prevention of human rights violations. Among her recent edited volumes, together with Professor Yves Haeck, are Human Rights in Latin-American Prisons: Towards a More Comprehensive Understanding (Brill | Nijhoff, 2025) and Impact within the Human Rights Framework (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2026).

Professor Burbano Herrera has conducted sustained fieldwork across Latin America and other regional contexts, including Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, The Gambia, and South Africa. She has also contributed amicus curiae briefs before international human rights bodies and held research positions at leading institutions, including a Fulbright Fellowship at Harvard University (USA) and visiting appointments at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Germany).

During her time at the UCL Institute of the Americas, Professor Burbano Herrera will continue her research on urgent measures within the Inter-American Human Rights System, focusing on their role in protecting individuals at imminent risk. This work forms part of her broader monographic project and engages critically with questions concerning the impact of international human rights bodies.

 Further information can be found here Human Rights in Context

Dr. Christopher Heaney 

Visiting Fellow

Dr. Christopher Heaney is Associate Professor of Modern Latin American History at Penn State University and a Visiting Academic at the UCL Institute of the Americas for 2025–2026. His research explores the history of science, museums, indigeneity, and deathways in the Andes and the wider Americas. He is the author of Empires of the Dead: Inca Mummies and the Peruvian Ancestors of American Anthropology (Oxford University Press, 2023), which won the Bolton-Johnson Prize from the Conference on Latin American History, and Cradle of Gold: The Story of Hiram Bingham, a Real-Life Indiana Jones, and the Search for Machu Picchu (Palgrave Macmillan 2010).

While at UCL, Heaney is researching the history of Andean materials in British museums and scientific collections, with particular attention to the movement of Inca and ancient Peruvian human remains through nineteenth-century networks of anatomy, archaeology, and imperial science. His writing for wider audiences has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, History Today, and The Atlantic. Further publications can be found on his Penn State website.

Dr Louisa Acciari

Honorary Senior Research Fellow

Dr Louisa Acciari’s research focuses on Gender, Labour and Social Movements in Latin America. She is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of the Americas, and Researcher at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil, where she coordinates the programme ‘Citizen Domestic Work’, in partnership with the National Federation of Domestic Workers and the Ministry of Women. She is a member of LASA (Latin American Studies Association) and RITHAL (Red de Investigación del Trabajo del Hogar en América Latina), sits at the SDG committee at UCL, and is Associate Editor of the Brazilian Journal of Occupational Health. She recently coordinated major projects on care work and the pandemic, including: “Who cares? Rebuilding care in the postpandemic world” (ESCR, £310,000), “Empowering women care workers in Brazil and Colombia (UCL, £65,000), and “Caring in times of crisis: a dialogue Chile-UK” (UCL, £20,000). See full list of publications here: http://lattes.cnpq.br/0702593188993109.  

Professor Jarvis Givens

Leverhulme Visiting Professor

As Leverhulme Visiting Professor at UCL, (Jan 2025-Dec 2025), Prof Givens will give guest lectures, provide one-to-one support, and training, on the ways racial violence has been perpetuated through historical methods, while also discussing ways of conducting historical research that attends to (and disrupts) racialised gaps in archives and historical scholarship.

Public lectures include a three-part series, entitled “I’ll Make Me a World”: Archives, Power, and the Production of Black History. These three lectures will explore past, present, and future struggles pertaining to the preservation, production, and study of Black history in the United States and the African Diaspora.

Dr Johanna Amaya-Panche

Honorary Research Fellow

Dr Johanna Amaya-Panche is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Edinburgh and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of the Americas, where she previously served as Lecturer and Director of the master’s program in Latin American Studies. She earned her PhD in Government from the University of Essex. Her research explores the impact of international actors on local collective action for peace, resilience, and reconciliation amid armed conflict, focusing on gender and ethnic dimensions. She works primarily in Latin America and the Global South. Her academic interests extend to transitional justice, multiculturalism, diversity, and research methodologies that link global and local dynamics.

Dr Amaya-Panche has worked with international organizations such as the European Union, USAID, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Her research has been featured on platforms like France 24, The Dialogue, and the Interethnic Committee for implementing Colombia’s Peace Agreement. A first-generation, mixed-race female scholar from the Global South, her work reflects her unique background and commitment to inclusive research. For more information, visit .Johanna’s personal website

Professor Victor Bulmer-Thomas

Honorary Professor

Victor Bulmer-Thomas is Honorary Professor at the UCL Institute of the Americas and Professor Emeritus of London University. He was Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies from 1992 to 1998 and Director of Chatham House from 2001-2006. From 2007 to 2010 he was Visiting Professor at Florida International University during which time he produced his latest book, The Economic History of the Caribbean from the Napoleonic Wars (Cambridge University Press, 2012). He has published extensively in the field amassing over 20 books either as author or as editor, including his Political Economy of Central America since 1920 (CUP, 1987); The Economic History of Latin America Since Independence (CUP, 1994, 2nd edn. 2003) and the two volume Cambridge Economic History of Latin America published in 2006. 

Dr Steven Cushion

Honorary Senior Research Fellow

Steve Cushion is co-convenor of the Caribbean Seminar series at UCL Institute of the Americas. He has published books and articles on the Cuban revolution, Caribbean labour history, anti-Nazi resistance, the Grenadian revolution, reparations for slavery and climate change.

As assistant secretary of the TUC LESE Environmental Sustainability and Just Transition Network he is working with the Oil Workers Trade Union of Trinidad and Tobago, the Southern Trelawny Environmental Agency and the Jamaica Environment Trust with the aim of developing a Just Transition policy for the extractive industries in the Caribbean.

As a member of the TUC LESE Reparations for Afrikan Enslavement Steering Group he is investigating links between slavery and Dorset.

Dr Vinicius de Carvalho

Honorary Senior Research Fellow

Dr Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho was born in Barra Mansa, Brazil. He received his PhD from the University of Passau, Germany, and his undergraduate and MA degrees from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil. He joined King’s in 2014 and before he was Associate Professor for Brazilian Studies at Aarhus University (2008-2014), Denmark, where he was also Director of the Latin American Centre (2012-2014).  Vinicius was a Lieutenant in the Brazilian Army (2007-2008), serving in the Military Technical Corps. At King’s, Dr Carvalho is Vice Dean (International) for the Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy, and between 2020 and 2022, he was director of King’s Brazil Institute. At the War Studies Department, he is the Convener of the MA in Strategic Communications and teaches UG modules on Latin America issues.

Dr Carvalho is the Circle U. Academic Chair Programme Coordinator.

Dr Carvalho has played an active role contributing to the field of Brazilian studies, founding and editing Brasiliana – Journal for Brazilian Studies and as Editor of the Anthem Brazilian Studies Series.

Dr Carvalho is also an Associate Researcher at the Centre for Strategic Studies of the Brazilian Navy. Parallel to his academic career, Dr. Carvalho is a music conductor and currently directs the King’s Brazil Ensemble.

His Research is multidisciplinary and cover topics such as Environmental security, Brazilian and Latin American Studies, Civil-Military Relations, Strategy, Strategic Communications, Brazilian Music, Literature and Culture. Find out more about Dr Vinicius de Carvalho.

Professor Gad Heuman

Honorary Senior Research Fellow

Gad Heuman is one of the convenors of the Caribbean Seminar at the Institute of the Americas. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Warwick and a former Director of the Centre for Caribbean Studies at Warwick. He is the author of Between Black and White, The Killing Time and The Caribbean: A Brief History and has edited books on Slave Resistance, Labour, The History of Slavery, and the Post-Emancipation Caribbean. He is the editor of the journal Slavery & Abolition.

Patrick Holdich, OBE

Honorary Senior Research Fellow

Patrick Holdich was until 2022 a senior UK civil servant and retired as Head of the FCDO’s Research Analysts, the research department and internal think-tank of the FCDO.  He studied at Bangor University and the LSE and had a brief early academic career in the 1980’s at the LSE and Queen Mary College as a Lecturer in History. He joined the FCO in 1985 and worked for over 35 years a career specialist on North American politics and history. This included two diplomatic postings to Canada (Ottawa, Montreal) and being appointed Head of the Americas Research Group in the FCO from 1998-2006.  

Aside from conducting in-house research within the FCO to help shape UK government policy, he maintained an active relationship with a range of UK and international research centres and think-tanks. He is a long-standing collaborator with the Institute of the Americas and contributor to conferences and seminar programmes. His primary focus as a Fellow at the Institute will be on Canadian politics and contemporary history

Dr David Hope

Honorary Lecturer

Dr Hope is a Lecturer in Political Economy in the King’s College London Department of Political Economy. He is an Honorary Lecturer at UCL, in his role as secondary supervisor for one of our research students. Learn more about Dr David Hope.

Dr Kesewa John

Honorary Lecturer

Dr John is a historian of Caribbean radicalism, intellectual history, and gender and an Honorary Lecturer at the Institute of the Americas. She is a Lecturer in Black British History at Goldsmiths where she convenes the MA in Black British History, the first of its kind in the UK. Dr John will be teaching modules which will be made available as intercollegiate modules to UCL students, covering Caribbean Radical Tradition; Introduction to Caribbean History and Empire to Windrush = histories of Britain and the Caribbean.
Between September 2021 and August 2023 she was Associate Lecturer in Caribbean History at the UCL Institute of the Americas. In 2023 she was nominated for UCL’s Student Choice Award for Inspired Teaching Delivery: ‘Inspiring Teaching Delivery allows students to thank a member of staff who delivers exceptional teaching, using innovative and engaging methods to hold their interest and help them to learn.’
Prior to joining UCL she worked in the Caribbean for a decade, as a Junior Fellow (ATER) at the Université des Antilles in Guadeloupe, and a Teaching Fellow (Lectrice and Vacataire) at the same university in Martinique. She is currently a co-convenor of the Institute for Historical Research’s Black British History Seminar.

Dr Richard Johnson

Honorary Research Fellow

Dr Johnson is a Lecturer in US Politics & Policy at Queen Mary University of London. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at UCL, in his role as secondary supervisor for one of our research students. Read more about Dr Johnson.

Dr Daniel Matin

Honorary Research Fellow

Dr Matlin is a Reader in History of the United States of America at King’s College London. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at UCL, in his role as secondary supervisor for one of our research students. Read more about Dr Matlin.

Dr Emily Morris

Honorary Senior Research Fellow

Dr Morris is a development economist and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Institute of the Americas. As a country analyst (at the Economist Intelligence Unit and Inter-American Development Bank) as well as an academic and consultant, the focus of her writing and public engagement has been the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean. Her current research is mainly on Cuba’s recent economic policy and performance, and its current process of reform and prospects.

In order to foster a range of multi-disciplinary research partnerships between the UK and the Caribbean to support progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, she has been building a UCL-Cuba Research Network, and has co-founded the ‘Caribbean Research and Innovation Collaboration for Knowledge Exchange and Transfer’ (CRICKET) community interest company. Topics of projects supported so far include sustainable urban transport, climate change adaptation, sustainable local development, and renewable energy financing and technologies.

Past Honorary and Visiting Academics

Find out how some of our past visiting academics spent their time with us:

Professor Jacqueline Behrend

Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor

As Leverhulme Visiting Professor at UCL (Jan 2025-March 2025), Prof Behrend delivered a series of engaging lectures and workshops based on her research focused on subnational comparative politics. These events included Subnational Political Dynasties & Democracy: Argentina, Brazil & Mexico and Uneven Democratization within Countries: Latin America and Beyond.

Professor Natalia Milanesio

Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor

As Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at UCL, (May 2023-May 2024), Prof Milanesio presented her work on the transformations of sexual ideologies, practices, and media content in Argentina after the fall of the 1970s dictatorship. She also shared her research on the rise of feminism in 1980s Argentina, examining the particularities of women’s activism during democratic restorations. 

Dr Catarina Barbieri

Honorary Research Associate

Dr Barbieri holds a PhD (2012), Masters (2008) and LL.B.(Law - 2003) from the University of São Paulo Law School (Brazil). She was a Fox International Fellow (2010-2011) at Yale University and visiting doctoral student at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (2011). Read more about Dr Barbieri.

Dr Bruno Cesar Barbosa

Honorary Research Fellow

Dr Bruno Cesar Barbosa spent time in London conducting a literature review of doctoral theses, Master’s dissertations, books and articles, correlating this scientific production with discussions around public health policies and rights claims by social movements to place his work on Brazil into comparative context. Read more about Dr Barbosa.

Dr Mario Bronfman

Dr Mario Bronfman is Associate Researcher at El Colegio de Mexico (México) and Consultant to The Ford Foundation.

From 2004 to 2015 Dr Bronfman was Representative of The Ford Foundation for Mexico and Central America and in charge of the Cuba portfolio. Dr Bronfman spent a month at UCL-IA writing a report on the Future of International Cooperation with/from/on Cuba.

Dr Elena Butti

Honorary Research Fellow

Dr. Elena Butti was an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute and a Research Associate at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding of IHEID in Geneva. She holds a PhD and a Post-Doc from the University of Oxford. Her research interests revolve around youth, drugs, crime, and precarity at the urban margins in Latin America and Colombia, specifically. Her current book project ”We Are the Nobodies: Youth, violence and drug-dealing in and around Medellín“ is an ethnographic exploration of adolescents’ first steps into drug-related crime in contemporary Colombia. She has collaborated with several international organizations on matters related to the Youth, Peace and Security agenda, and she currently works as the Global Youth Programming Advisor for the humanitarian NGO War Child. Elena also an amateur film-maker and have made extensive use of participatory film-making as an ethnographic research technique. More info about Elena’s research, work, and films can be found at www.elenabutti.com.

Dr Elizabeth Cooper

Honorary Research Fellow

Dr Elizabeth Cooper is the Curator for Latin American and Caribbean Collections at the British Library. She was an Honorary Research Fellow at UCL, co-supervising Naomi Oppenheim’s PhD studies as part of a Collaborative Research Partnership between The British Library and UCL Institute of the Americas.

Professor Richard Follett

British Association for American Studies/UCL Institute of the Americas Research Fellow

Professor Follett was writing White Fright: Slave Revolts in American Memory, a history of slave rebellions and their legacies from the 18th to early 20th centuries. He was also completing Plantation Kingdom: The American South and its Global Commodities, co-authored with Sven Beckert, Peter Coclanis, and Barbara Hahn. At the time of visiting, both books are under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press. Visit Professor Follet’s University of Sussex profile.

Professor Roberto Gargarella

Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor

Professor Gargarella was the 2014 Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at UCL Institute of the Americas. At the time of his visit he worked at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Argentina. He is a distinguished Argentine lawyer and sociologist, with doctoral degrees from Universidad de Buenos Aires (1991) and University of Chicago (1993). Visit Professor Gargarella’s Universidad Torcuato di Tella profile.

Dr Andrea Gartenlaub

Visiting Researcher 

Dr Gartenlaub holds a PhD in Social Sciences (2018), Masters of Arts in Political Science (2009) and Bachelor in Social Communication (2000) from the University of Chile (Chile). She was a visiting doctoral student at the University of Georgetown Center of Latin American Studies (CLAS) (2015). Also, she served as Communications Advisor to the Cabinet of the National Health Fund of the Government of Chile. She works on the areas of Elites and Political Parties, Social Public Policy, and Gender. Currently teaching and researching in the Universidad Autonoma of Chile. Visit Dr Gartenlaub’s research profile.

Dr Terri-Ann Gilbert-Roberts

Dr Gilbert-Roberts is a Jamaican regionalist with an interest in the politics of development, particularly at the intersection of governance, regionalism and youth development.

While at UCL Americas, as a Commonwealth Academic Fellow, Dr Gilbert-Roberts explored the dynamics of youth participation in regional governance and the governance of development.

Dr Andrei Gómez-Suárez

Honorary Senior Research Associate

Andrei Gómez-Suárez is the author of Genocide, Geopolitics and Transnational Networks(Routledge, 2015) and El Triunfo del No (Icono, 2016). His current work focuses on restricted space, civil society peacebuilding, and transitional justice. Read more about Dr Gómez-Suárez.

Professor Ricardo López-Pedreros

Leverhulme Visiting Professor

Professor Ricardo López-Pedreros’s visited the Institute as Leverhulme Visiting Professor from September 2021 to June 2022. During this period Professor López-Pedreros worked on his research project on contested democracy in Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century, which evolved into several planned publications, including two co-edited volumes on the histories of Colombia to be published by Routledge, a monograph titled The Social Foundations of Neo-Liberalism: A History of Society, Colombia, 1970-2016 and a book manuscript, provisionally titled The Iconoclast Lives of Gabriel Restrepo: Transnational Knowledge, Power, and Subjectivities in the Colombian Long Twentieth Century. He also completed work on a Spanish translation, published by Planeta, of his monograph Makers of Democracy: A Transnational History of the Middle Classes in Colombia and of a co-edited volume on the histories of the middle classes in Latin America, published by Routledge. This co-edited volume will also be published in Spanish by University of Rosario Press (Colombia) and University of Cuajimalpa (Mexico) in Spring 2023.

In addition to conducting his own research, Professor López-Pedreros took part in a number of Institute events, including his Leverhulme Trust Lecture, titled América and the Elites without History: Some Questions on Democracy as Domination. He also taught a masters-level module on the history of neoliberalism in Latin America, as well as contributing to a number of other modules as a guest lecturer.

Dr Yael Mabat

Visiting Scholar

Dr Mabet was a visiting Scholar at the department, from her roles as a post-doctoral fellow at Tel Aviv University, and a lecturer at Ben Gurion University, Israel. Broadly, her research focuses on modern Christianity in the Americas with a particular interest in transnational religious encounters and how they shaped local social, economic, and political structures. Her book Sacrifice and Regeneration: Seventh-day Adventism and Religious Transformation in the Andes, examines the unique success of the Seventh-day Adventist missionaries in the Andean highlands. She has been working on the intersection between religion and modern medicine, primarily as manifested through the work of medical missionaries. 

Professor Morna Macleod

Honorary Senior Research Associate

Morna Macleod works on internal individual and family displacement triggered by organized crime in Central Mexico, and coordinates a monthly seminar bringing together academics, students and practitioners from various countries. Click here to visit Morna’s website [external source] for more information about her research.

Dr Christian O’Connell

British Association for American Studies/UCL Institute of the Americas Research Fellow

Dr O’Connell was Lecturer in American History at the University of Gloucestershire at the time of his visiting fellowship at UCL Americas.

As part of the BAAS/UCL Americas Fellowship, Christian worked on a new project which examines the black American South in British popular culture. He looked at representations of the life, culture and history the black South in popular programmes, starting from The Black and White Minstrel Show, up to recent documentaries by Sir Trevor MacDonald, Rick Stein and Hugh Laurie. Read more about Dr O’Connell.

Dr Tom Packer

Honorary Research Fellow
t.packer@ucl.ac.uk

Tom Packer was an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of the Americas until October 2022. He is also an Associate Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute in 2020-21. His research and teaching interests include US politics, elections, US Conservatism, and US history broadly defined. Previously, Packer has been a lecturer in US history at Oxford, a fellow in American Studies at both Warwick and the School of Advanced Studies (University of London), and a fellow in US Politics at Durham. His current research project is a study of Senator Jesse Helms and the politics of North Carolina.