Republics of Knowledge: Nations of the Future in Latin America

Nicola Miller is professor of Latin American history at University College London. She is interested in the intellectual, cultural, political and international history of the Americas, in comparative and transnational perspectives; and in nationalism and national identity, especially in the Americas. Her current research focuses on the history of knowledge in Latin America. Her books include Reinventing Modernity in Latin America: Intellectuals Imagine the Future, 1900–1930 and In the Shadow of the State: Intellectuals and the Quest for National Identity in Twentieth-Century Spanish America.

Christopher Heaney is a historian of Latin America, with research interests in the history of science, indigeneity, museums, race, and deathways in the Andes, Americas, and the World. His most recent, Empires of the Dead: Inca Mummies and the Peruvian Ancestors of American Anthropology (Oxford University Press, 2023), is a history of the collection and display of Inca mummies and ancient Peruvian skulls in the Americas, spanning from the 16th century to the present. It won the Bolton-Johnson Prize for the best book in English on Latin American History published in 2023 from the Conference on Latin American History.

Sophie Brockmann is a historian of modern Central America, specialising on histories of environment, landscapes and science between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. She is currently working on her second book project, tentatively entitled "Making National Heritage in Transnational Environments, 1890-1940", funded by a Leverhulme Fellowship. This project examines how Maya archaeological sites were transformed into tourist sites and ‘national heritage’ in twentieth century Guatemala, and the influence of surrounding agricultural landscapes and agribusiness on this process.

Paulo Drinot is Professor of Latin American History at the Institute of the Americas, UCL.