CELAS supports individual and collaborative research projects in Latin American and Latinx Studies via a competitive process. These are the research projects we have supported in recent years:
Research Awards 2026
Faculty
- Azucena Castro, MCLLC, “Mining Poetry for Alternative Energy Imaginaries in Southern Verses: South America, South Africa and Southern Spain.”
- Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, Sociology, “The Diversity Imaginary: Power, Meaning, and Value in Brazilian Science”
- Alida Metcalf, History, “imagineRio: The First Maps of Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas”
- Paula Park, MCLLC, “Asian Latine Houston: Remigrants, Mixed Race Populations, and Culinary Contact Zones”
Graduate Students
- Yiran Chi, Color, Art History, “Abstraction and the Politics of Solidarity: Rethinking Modernism Through OSPAAAL”
- Isabela Padilla and Ignacio Santoro, Political Science, “Fresh Start or Ideological Battle? An Experimental Research about Voter Support for New Right Wing Parties In Latin America”
- Alejandra Osejo Varona, Anthropology, “Hippos in the Afterlives of Drug Trafficking and Armed Conflict in Colombia: Enduring Marks and Imagined Futures of the Magdalena River”
- Laura Vázquez Arreguín, History, “Transpacific Encounters in the Archives of Seville, Madrid and Avila”
Research Clusters
- Environment and Conflict: Sophie Esch & Alejandra Osejo Varona, MCLLC and Anthropology, “Hippos Gone Art. Afterlives of the Drug War in Colombia”
Research Awards 2025
Faculty
- Claire Branigan, MCLC, Generative Kinship: Family Activism for Justice in Latin America
- Azucena Castro, MCLC, Multispecies Resistance. Decolonizing Invasive Ecology Narratives under Chemical Colonialism from South America
- Alida Metcalf, History, Adding the 1964 Cadastral Map to imagineRio
Graduate Students
- Logan Buffa, History, Hell on Devil's Isle: Indian Slavery and Atlantic Bermuda
- Alejandra Osejo Varona, Anthropology, Unpacking the Hippo Controversy: A Collaborative Knowledge-Sharing Project in Colombia
- Isaac Salazar, English, Reclaiming Anzaldúa’s Valley: Spiritual Resistance as Planetary Citizenship in the Age of Desconocimiento
- Laura Vazquez Arreguin, History, The Complex Transpacific connections of the 17th Century Spanish Empire
Undergraduate students
- Simran Haribhai, Anthropology, Navigating Legal Barriers: Domestic Violence Survivors in Hague Convention Child Abduction Cases (Texas-based)
- Quinn Healy, LALX, History Queer Sociopolitical Mobilization in 21st Century Brazil