Bruno Biasetto
Postdoctoral Researcher
Visiting Researcher
Research Cluster: Migration, Labour, and Political Economy
About Bruno Biasetto
Bruno Biasetto is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher for the History Department at 91亚色. 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.
Guido Botti Zanello
Visiting Researcher
Research Cluster: Environment, Extraction, and Territory
About Guido Botti Zanello
I am a Brazilian student currently pursuing a Bachelor鈥檚 degree in Social Sciences at the
Federal University of Esp铆rito 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 Capara贸) to support low-income families excluded from
traditional credit systems, and also established the Association of Small Farmers of Vale
do Portal do C茅u, where I served as Secretary, Treasurer, and President. Additionally, I
coordinated one of Brazil鈥檚 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鈥檚 ongoing research projects.
Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Brazil
Keywords: community organization, sustainable agriculture, and environmental restoration
Flavia Carlet
Visiting Researcher
Research Cluster: Violence, Conflict, and Contestation
About Flavia Carlet
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 鈥淏etween Justice and Colonial Legacy: The Judicialization of Territorial and Nature Rights in Ecuador.鈥 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 鈥淚mpunity for Crimes of Murder in Rural Massacres (1985鈥2023)鈥 (University of Brasilia/MJSP). Most recently, I co-edited the special issue 鈥Research on People麓s Lawyering in Latin America' published in the journal 滨苍厂鲍搁驳锚苍肠颈补 (vol. 11, no. 2, 2025).
Beyond academia, I collaborate with the National Network of People鈥檚 Lawyering (RENAP) and with the Institute for Law, Research, and Social Movements (IPDMS) in Brazil.
Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization:听Brazil and Ecuador, (with an interest in expanding to other parts of Latin America and Canada).
碍别测飞辞谤诲蝉:听 Afro-descendant communities; Collective Territorial Rights; Rights of Nature; Socio-environmental Conflicts; Decolonial Theory; People麓s Lawyering in Latin America.
Iara Cerqueira
Postdoctoral Researcher
Visiting Researcher
Research Cluster: Arts, Literatures, and Languages
About Iara Cerqueira
Iara Cerqueira has a PhD in Communication and Semiotics from PUC/SP. She is a Full Professor in the Department of Human Sciences and Letters at the State University of Southwest Bahia - UESB, a Permanent Professor in the PPGCEL - Graduate Program in Letters: Culture, Education and Languages, and a Collaborating Professor in the PPGDAN - Graduate Program in Dance at UFRJ. She is also a Post-Doctorate in Scenic Arts from ECA/USP. She coordinates the GPNEC - Research Group Nucleus of Body Studies. She collaborates with the research groups LADCOR-USP, GAP-MOTUS - UESB, and 脕GORA-UFBA.
She is also an organizer and author of books and articles and is currently researching "Otherness and body ecology: an ethnographic look at dance practices in the Global South".
Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Brazil, Canada
Keywords: body, otherness, narratives, insurgencies.
Patrick Clark
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science and Global Development Studies, Saint Mary's University, Nova Scotia
Visiting Researcher
Research Cluster: Migration, Labour, and Political Economy
About Patrick Clark
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鈥檚 University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In his current position at St. Mary鈥檚, 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 91亚色, 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.
Dolores Figueroa
Post-Doctoral Fellow, CIESAS, Mexico
Associate Fellow, Visiting Researcher
About Dolores Figueroa
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鈥檚 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麓s regional organizations
Keywords: Gender, human rights, justice, indigenous identity politics, transnational activism and political participation
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Paulina Mu帽oz
Visiting Researcher
Research Cluster: Migration, Labour, and Political Economy
About Paulina Mu帽oz
Paulina Mu帽oz Charalamby is a sociologist and researcher specializing in interculturality, indigenous studies, gender, and public policy in Latin America. She holds a Master's degree in Political Sociology from Universidad Alberto Hurtado (Chile), where her thesis examined expert knowledge and plurinationalism in Chile's Constitutional Convention (2019鈥2022).
She is currently a researcher at FLACSO Chile, contributing to the VII Regional Report on diversity and interculturality policies in Latin America and the Caribbean, with a focus on indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities, and migrants. Based in Toronto since 2023, she also works as a co-facilitator at Counterpoint Cooperative, delivering group intervention programs, and founded Mi Historia en Palabras, a trauma-informed autobiographical writing workshop for diverse communities.
Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Chile, Canada, Latin America
Keywords: Plurinationalism, interculturality, indigenous peoples, Latin America, Chile, gender policy, constitutional processes
Margie Rauen
Professor, Graduate Program of Education of the Midwestern State University (UNICENTRO) in Paran谩, Brazil
Associate Fellow, Visiting Researcher
Research Cluster: Arts, Literatures, and Languages
About Margie Rauen
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 Paran谩, 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鈥檚 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 翱蹿茅濒颈补蝉/础-惫辞颈诲-颈苍驳, Juliets, and Shadows of Sycorax. These makeovers of Shakespearean characters听 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 鈥 Vol. 8, Ugly Duckling Presse, New 91亚色/USA, 2019, p. 298鈥299). Since then, she has expanded Performing_names as a video project that addresses intersectional issues, yet to earn funding. Margie鈥檚 current work titled 鈥淏razil Commodities 1: coffee鈥 听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 脡lisab茅thains, and Delaware/Fairleigh Dickinson Presses. She served as reviewer and guest-editor of prestigious Brazilian academic journals (Ilha do Desterro 鈥 UFSC-Federal Univ. of Santa Catarina; Revista Cient铆fica da FAP 鈥 UNESPAR (one of the founders); 听Urdimento; Education, Arts, and Inclusion 鈥 UDESC- State University of Santa Catarina). She recently published, with her co-editor Andr茅ia Schach Fey, an eBook on notable Brazilian women titled 听Women in the Arts, Letters, Sciences and Dailies in Paran谩 (S茫o Paulo: Pimenta Cultural, 2024), available for free download at
Margie Rauen鈥檚 听website: https://margierauen.com/index.html
For a CV online, access
A video that features a creative process developed with Margie鈥檚 art students and was screened at the 2016 Annual Conference of the American Society for Theatre Research can be watched at
Country or Region of Specialization:听Brazil
Keywords:听Gender, ethnic-racial categories, intersectional feminism, activisms
