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.

I am a Brazilian student currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences at the
Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES). My coursework includes Anthropology,
Sociology, and Political Science.

Over the years, I have developed diverse experiences at the intersection of community
organization, sustainable agriculture, and environmental restoration. I co-founded a
Community Bank (Banco Caparaó) to support low-income families excluded from
traditional credit systems, and also established the Association of Small Farmers of Vale
do Portal do Céu, where I served as Secretary, Treasurer, and President. Additionally, I
coordinated one of Brazil’s largest environmental recovery projects (PRAD) in the
restinga ecosystem, and implemented agricultural initiatives such as test plantations of
African mahogany and integrated models involving cocoa, coffee, and oil palm in Southern
Bahia.

Internationally, I spent one year as a WWOOF volunteer across six European countries,
gaining intercultural experience in intentional communities, organic agriculture, and
cooperative work. These opportunities have sharpened my ability to work collaboratively in
multicultural and multidisciplinary environments, which I believe will be valuable in
supporting CERLAC’s ongoing research projects.

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

Keywords: community organization, sustainable agriculture, and environmental restoration

I am a Brazilian researcher with a Ph.D. in Sociology of Law from the University of Coimbra, Portugal. My work focuses on Afro-descendant communities in Latin America and their struggles for collective territorial rights, as well as on the diverse practices of social movement lawyering across the region. From 2019 to 2021, I held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), where I examined a socio-environmental conflict involving the Afro-Ecuadorian community of La Chiquita and palm oil corporations.

Currently, I am a Visiting Researcher at CERLAC with the project “Between Justice and Colonial Legacy: The Judicialization of Territorial and Nature Rights in Ecuador.” This study investigates how and why the Ecuadorian judiciary has responded differently to legal claims concerning territorial rights and the Rights of Nature.

I also serve as a researcher in the project “Impunity for Crimes of Murder in Rural Massacres (1985–2023)” (University of Brasilia/MJSP). Most recently, I co-edited the special issue ‘Research on People´s Lawyering in Latin America' published in the journal InSURgência (vol. 11, no. 2, 2025).

Beyond academia, I collaborate with the National Network of People’s Lawyering (RENAP) and with the Institute for Law, Research, and Social Movements (IPDMS) in Brazil.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Brazil and Ecuador, (with an interest in expanding to other parts of Latin America and Canada).

Keywords:  Afro-descendant communities; Collective Territorial Rights; Rights of Nature; Socio-environmental Conflicts; Decolonial Theory; People´s Lawyering in Latin America.

Patrick Clark is a Visiting Researcher at CERLAC and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science and Global Development Studies at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In his current position at St. Mary’s, he is researching the intersection between climate change and international trade agreements in a project led by University Research Professor Gavin Fridell. He completed his PhD in Political Economy at the Department of Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa. His doctoral dissertation analyzed processes of sustainable agricultural transition led by small farmer organizations and co-operatives and public policies for Ecuador's rural development during the Rafael Correa government between 2006-2017. Between 2021 and 2024, he held an appointment as a Sessional Assistant Professor in the Business and Society program in the Department of Social Science at York, during which he also served as a member of the CERLAC executive. In addition to current research on the international trade dimensions of the green transition, he is also engaged in several ongoing research and writing projects, including a forthcoming co-authored book with Edward Elgar Press on the history of the Fair Trade movement. He is also preparing an article on the re-emergence of smallholder agricultural co-operatives in Peru after the economic liberalization policies implemented in the 1990s. In the longer term, he would like to continue researching the comparative political economy of the Andean countries and the role of non-state regulation in driving sustainability transitions.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Interest: Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela

Keywords: Rural development, social economy and social innovation, Ecuador, Peru, neo-structuralism/ neo-developmentalism in Latin America, comparative politics and Left political parties, state-society relations, economic sociology and anthropology.

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

I am currently a Social Researcher at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Chile, where I systematize information on the work of the 'Originarias' Center in Iquique, focusing on indigenous women. This project is in collaboration with UN Women, and my role includes writing reports on Canadian healthcare and wellbeing policy.

From 2022 to 2023, I worked at Chile’s National Service of Immigration (SERMIG), where I wrote the baseline report for the National Director’s staff regarding Chile's National Migration Policy. This role involved analyzing policy gaps, participating in institutional meetings, and drafting documents to support government decision-making, with an emphasis on gender, youth, disability, and human rights considerations.

Since moving to Toronto in 2023, I have expanded my work to include non-fiction creative writing workshops focused on autobiography for diverse groups such as refugees, seniors, women, and teenagers. I have partnered with organizations like Canada Habla Español, Grupo Cultural La Escuela, Vivi’r, and Women’s Habitat to deliver these workshops in Spanish, promoting self-expression through storytelling. Additionally, I contributed to research on Chile's recent constitutional drafting process, examining the influence of Think Tanks on the Constitutional Convention's regulations.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Chile, Canada

Keywords: Indigenous women, Canada healthcare, wellbeing policy, UN

Dr. Margarida Gandara Rauen, who goes by the art name Margie Rauen (she/her), is an independent visiting scholar, having retired as a professor of Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste (UNICENTRO) in Paraná, Brazil, where she served in the Department of Arts and the Graduate Program of Education. Margie was first hosted at CERLAC by Dr. Honor Ford-Smith as a visiting scholar and became an Associate Fellow of the cluster of Arts, Literatures and Languages in 2022. Since then, Margie has pursued research about feminist activism, intercultural performances, identities, and herstories in the LAWG Special Collection of CERLAC’s Resource Centre.

Her works encompass gender, ethnic-racial categories, participatory poetics, and intercultural approaches to creative processes and to curriculum redefinition from the stance of intersectional feminism, fostering peace, equity, respect. As a professor at UNICENTRO, she taught required courses covering theoretical paradigms, post-structuralist and feminist theory, research methodology, in addition to elective special topics, namely: creative processes in theatre and performance art; the intersectional lens for fostering equity in the curriculum and thinking beyond white feminism, on the inclusion of relevant authors who have remained invisible due to androcentrism and eurocentrism in education.

She 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). She was a Global Shakespeare Fellow at the University of Warwick, UK, in 2017. As a director and playwright in Brazil, her main earlier works were Ofélias/A-void-ing, Juliets, and Shadows of Sycorax. These makeovers of Shakespearean characters  discuss experiences of marginalized women and performed in an art gallery, in thirteen different community venues, and in a prison (a forum theater immersion with teenager inmates), respectively. Such site-specific works, forum theater/theater of the oppressed, and outreach workshop projects in community venues since the 1990s earned grants from the Curitiba Cultural Foundation. They also were sponsored by UNICENTRO in the cities of Irati and Guarapuava. Her work-in-process Performing_names evolved 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, she has expanded Performing_names as a video project that addresses intersectional issues, yet to earn funding. Margie’s current work titled “Brazil Commodities 1: coffee”  was performed during the I Arts and Literature Festival of CERLAC (October 24, 2024).

Her publications in Brazil, the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany feature scholarship from a post-colonial stance, including the political use of William Shakespeare as a canonical author in Brazil in articles per Oxford, Cahiers Élisabéthains, and Delaware/Fairleigh Dickinson Presses. She served as reviewer and guest-editor of prestigious Brazilian academic journals (Ilha do Desterro – UFSC-Federal Univ. of Santa Catarina; Revista Científica da FAP – UNESPAR (one of the founders);  Urdimento; Education, Arts, and Inclusion – UDESC- State University of Santa Catarina). She recently published, with her co-editor Andréia Schach Fey, an eBook on notable Brazilian women titled  Women in the Arts, Letters, Sciences and Dailies in Paraná (São Paulo: Pimenta Cultural, 2024), available for free download at https://ocul-yor.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01OCUL_YOR/1jocqcq/alma991036925252705164

Margie Rauen’s  website: 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 Margie’s 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 or Region of Specialization: Brazil

Keywords: Gender, ethnic-racial categories, intersectional feminism, activisms

David Sanchez Villa is a doctoral fellow in Social Sciences at the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Public Policies (CIEPP)/National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), both from Argentina. The title of his research topic is: Turn to the right, changes in social protection? Architecture of the reforms in Argentina and Brazil. This research focuses on the reforms of the center-right and ultra-right governments in retirement, family transfer programs, and labor regulations.

His research interests include studying social protection systems in Latin America with special emphasis on pension policy, family allowances, and employment and social assistance programs. At the same time, he specializes in issues related to inequality.

Previously, David held different positions in State Government, at the municipal and federal levels. This includes the Ministry of Social Development of the Nation, and the Ministry of Territorial Development and Habitat of the Nation. At the municipal level, he worked in the Secretary of Employment Promotion and Social Economy of the town of Morón.

David really likes teaching. In recent years he has been a teacher in secondary schools, universities, and community organizations. Among the subjects he taught were human rights, labor rights, and social protection systems.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Argentina, Brazil, Latin America.

Keywords: Social protection system, Welfare State, Argentina, Brazil