Visiting Researchers

Bruno Biasetto is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher for the History Department at York University. History PhD at Georgetown University (USA), with an emphasis in economic history of Latin America (2016). Adjunct Professor at the History Department of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (2017). Market analyst at Sarria Research for European retail and oil market sectors (2018). Author of several chapters of books and articles, he currently researches environmental/economic history of Latin America (19th and 20th centuries) and global history of oil and energy (20th century).

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Brazil, Argentina, United States, Canada and Uruguay.

Keywords: Environmental history, economic history, 20th century, oil and finance.

Generally speaking my academic interests are focused on the gender politics of indigenous movements, the political participation of indigenous women in the public realms and the subjective construction of indigenous leaders as mediators of their communities in different levels of governance.

My analytical work is located at the intersection of debates on indigenous women’s identity politics in Latin America, transnational feminism, and the politics of the adoption of human rights discourse at global and local levels. I have been interested during the last years on exploring the correlation of Indigenous women transnational activism and the proliferation of learning experiences for building leadership capacities. In particular I analyze the structure of opportunities that have forged the networking process of indigenous women at the continental level and how the political leverage of indigenous women leaders has been instrumental in its consolidation. In the context of Mexico I have been involved in process of strengthening capacities of local women leaders who want to participate in electoral and community politics alike.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Mexico, Nicaragua and transnational spaces created to consolidate Indigenous women´s regional organizations

Keywords: Gender, human rights, justice, indigenous identity politics, transnational activism and political participation

Carmen is Research Associate of the Group for the Analysis of Development (Lima, Peru) in the fields of poverty and inequality and rural development.  Her current research focuses on understanding the effects of climate change on rural household livelihoods in the Peruvian Andes, studying both farm and non-farm income sources.  She is interested in investigating the role of distant family networks on rural household resilience to climate change.  Interested in the research-policy interface, recently she studied the impact of a public project that combines safety protection (conditional cash transfers) and economic opportunities to foster sustainable livelihoods in rural areas.

In previous years, she conducted research on rural territorial dynamics in the Peruvian Andes (a project lead by RIMISP and carried out by researchers from 11 countries across Latin America), on inequality of economic opportunities for indigenous populations in Peru, on polarization and segregation of income distribution over the last 30 decades in Peru, and on the impact of policies and projects on rural households (rural roads, rural development projects, free trade agreement with the United States of America).  She also studied child poverty issues in Peru, including multidimensional characterizations of child poverty (both for the country and for indigenous populations in particular), as well as research on the effect of child work on literacy and numeracy.  Some of her research applied quantitative methodologies, including experimental and non-experimental impact evaluation (emphasizing heterogeneity across subpopulations), poverty mapping and small area estimates, while other studies applied mixed methodologies (qualitative and quantitative).

Region of specialization: Peru, Latin America.

Keywords: climate change and rural livelihoods, rural development, poverty and inequality, child poverty.

Dr. Margarida Gandara Rauen goes by the art name Margie Rauen (she/her) and is a faculty member on leave from the Graduate Program of Education of the Midwestern State University (UNICENTRO) in Paraná, Brazil. As a self-funded guest at CERLAC, Margie plans to carry on research about intercultural performances and identities, be it by relying on library resources or through exchange with CERLAC associates and/or Canada-based Latin American artists with similar interests. Margie has initially been hosted by Dr. Honor Ford-Smith.

As a senior researcher, my works encompass gender, ethnic-racial categories, participatory poetics and intercultural approaches to creative processes and to curriculum redefinition from the stance of intersectional feminism. While my position is vexed as a white woman with European ancestry, I embraced creative processes and teaching practices that foster peace, equity, respect, having learned from and shared with the communities that welcomed me. As a professor at UNICENTRO, I have taught required courses covering theoretical paradigms, post-structuralist and feminist theory in research methodology, in addition to elective ones on several topics, namely: creative processes in theatre and performance art; thinking beyond white feminism, on the inclusion of relevant authors who have remained invisible due to androcentrism and eurocentrism in education; the intersectional lens for fostering equity in the curriculum.

I earned a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. in English/Theater (MSU, USA, 1987), having developed post-doctoral projects as a Folger Institute Fellow (USA, 1993, 1997, 2003). I was a Global Shakespeare Fellow at the University of Warwick, UK, in 2017. As a director and playwright, my works Ofélias/A-void-ing, Juliets, and Shadows of Sycorax illustrate the interest I took in makeovers of Shakespearean characters to discuss the condition of marginalized women. These plays were done in an art gallery, in 13 different community venues, and in a prison (aa forum theater immersion with teenager girls), respectively. Such site-specific performances, forum theater/theater of the oppressed, and outreach workshop projects in community venues since the 1990s in Brazil have been funded by the Curitiba Cultural Foundation, as well as sponsored by my home institution UNICENTRO in its Irati and Guarapuava campi. My current work-in-process Performing_names was conceived during residencies at Artscape Gibraltar Point, Toronto Island, Canada in 2018 and 2019 (there is an entry in the Emergency Index – Vol. 8, Ugly Duckling Presse, New York/USA, 2019, p. 298–299). Since then, it has been a humbling experience to expand Performing_names and address intersectional issues in herstories of Black women and Indigenous women.

My publications in Brazil, the United Kingdom, France and Germany feature articles about gender studies applied to creative processes and non-hegemonic art teaching. Earlier scholarship from a post-colonial stance regarding the political use of William Shakespeare as a canonical author in Brazil is available in articles per Oxford, Cahiers Élisabéthains, and Delaware/Fairleigh Dickinson Presses. I also am the author of Interactivity, scene control and the authorial agency of the audience (University of Bahia Press, 2009), a collection of essays about participatory poetics. I have served as reviewer and guest-editor of prestigious Brazilian academic journals (Ilha do Desterro - UFSC-Federal Univ. of Santa Catarina; Urdimento; Education, Arts and Inclusion – UDESC- State University of Santa Catarina). I am presently editing a new collection of essays on notable women who have not enjoyed the visibility they deserve in the fields of art, literature and science in my home state of Paraná (forthcoming in 2023).

A personal website is available at: https://margierauen.com/index.html

For a CV online, access https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0000-0002-2466-339X

A video that features a creative process developed with my art students and was screened at the 2016 Annual Conference of the American Society for Theatre Research can be watched at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1GyZj7CArI&t=35s>

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Brazil

Keywords: Gender, ethnic-racial categories, intersectional feminism

Xiao Alvin Yang is currently a PhD candidate in political and economic science at Universität Kassel, Germany and a visiting researcher at York Center for Asian Research, Canada. His PhD dissertation examines emerging indigenous international relations(IR) theories worldwide, especially those in Brazil, China and India. Alvin is also a musician and a drummer. He has studied drumming in various Latin music styles, including  Bossa Nova, Samba, Salsa and Afro-Cuban music. Moreover, he has performed music and given talks in Asia, Europe and North America.

Alvin has a broad range of research interests, which include IR theories, developmental economics, sociology, anthropology, biology, and quantitative and statistical methods, as well as music, architectures, and world religions. His recent work, “Theorizing the BRICS: Does the BRICS Challenge the Current Global Order?” has been published in Xing Li’s edited book, The International Political Economy of BRICS (Routledge 2019). His works on emerging Chinese IR theories and indigenous Southeast Asia IR theories have appeared in several journals both in English and Chinese, such as the Journal of China and International Relations, Journal of Chinese Political Science, as well as in 国际关系研究 (Journal of International Relations) and 世界经济与政治 (World Economics and Politics). Furthermore, he has been a visiting researcher at the Center for East and South-East Asia Studies at Lund University in Sweden and the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Brazil; Latin America

Keywords: Indigenous International Relations Theories; Sustainable Development; Poverty Alleviation; Democracy and Human Rights; Global Political Economy; Latin Music and Percussions