About the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
© PromPeru, Carnaval de Puno
The Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies is a focal point for the diverse and geographically dispersed research activities associated with Latin America and the Caribbean at the University of Manchester. It brings together one of the largest teams of Latin-Americanists and Caribbeanists in Europe, from a wide array of disciplines and departments: Social Anthropology; Literature, Cultural Studies and Linguistics; History and Art History; Geography; Drama and Screen Studies; Political Sciences; Development Studies; Economics; and Business.
The Centre co-ordinates research projects across disciplinary, institutional, and national boundaries, providing a fuller understanding of the Latin American and Caribbean regions and of the broader relations between North and South in the context of contemporary cultural, political, and economic globalisation The Centre is co-directed by Professor John Gledhill (Social Anthropology) and Dr Par Kumaraswami (Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies). Staff associated with the Centre also teach an MA programme in Latin American Cultural Studies and supervise PhD students in this field who are attracted by our inter-disciplinary approach.
© John Gledhill, Procesion de San Juan
Only a fully interdisciplinary Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies can account for the complexity of a region entering a new round of economic, political, and social crises. Latin America has long been a testing ground for social and political theories whose failure to include a cultural perspective has led to their intellectual and practical bankruptcy; nowhere is this more apparent than in the most recent, neoliberal, experiment. Yet Latin America, always a key player in the worldwide flows of cultural, ideological, and commercial exchanges, also provides a foretaste of the challenges that contemporary globalisation brings.
© John Perivolaris, El Lado
Latin American and Caribbean Studies have traditionally respected the boundaries of academic disciplines and been united by the notion that Latin America and the Caribbean can be divided into regions that are relatively self-contained and homogenous in their linguistic, cultural, and political histories. This approach is now untenable, and Latin American and Caribbean Studies, as practised in Manchester, constitutes a response to this present dilemma. Informed by both the Humanities and the Social Sciences, the Centre is concerned to: expand the conception of culture; question divides between culture, politics, and history; re-evaluate forms of culture often considered unworthy of academic investigation; and examine the effects of this delegitimisation itself. We aim to take Latin America and the Caribbean and their complex interactions with each other and the rest of the world as the context for a re-theorisation of approaches to studying Latin America.