Research staff

Professor Jenny Pearce

Jenny Pearce is a political scientist with area expertise in Latin America. She works with anthropological and participatory research methodologies on social change, violence, security, power and participation in the region. She considers herself a peace scholar, committed to theoretical development of the field of peace, power and violence as well as empirical study. She has conducted fieldwork since the 1980s in Colombia, Central America (including a protracted ethnography of peace building in Huehuetenango, Guatemala), Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Venezuela.

While committed to research on Latin America, Professor Pearce has also developed a body of work around poverty, participation and violence in the global North, bringing learning from Latin America (South North learning) to the realities of urban conflict and tensions in the de-industrialised north of England. She set up and directed the International Centre for Participation Studies in Peace Studies 2003 to 2014. The work of the ICPS was a successful Impact Case Study Submission to the REF in 2014.

She was Visiting Professor at the University of Monterey (2014), Mexico, and the Bolivariana Univeristy, Medellin, Colombia. In July 2015 she was awarded an honour as ‘Outstanding Latin Americanist’ by the International Conference of Americanists (ICA) at their conference in El Salvador. Since 2016, she has been Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Edgehill, where she contributes to work on participation in the North of England. She is currently writing a conceptual book on Politics and Violence, and researching Elites and Violence in Latin America.

Email: J.Pearce3@lse.ac.uk

Dr Alexandra Abello Colak

Alexandra is Research Officer on the ESRC-Newton funded project, Co-constructing Security Provision in Mexico: A Methodology and Action Plan from Communities to the State that aims to build a new approach to security provision in four Mexican localities entitled. Her research interest focuses on urban security and social change in the Global South, as well as on methodological innovations for security research in contexts of chronic violence. Alexandra has undertaken ethnographic work in urban communities affected by high levels of violence in Medellin.

She has also participated in the collaborative development of methodologies to co-produce security knowledge with vulnerable communities and improve security governance in Latin American cities. She co-edited the book New Security Thinking in Latin America with Dr. Angarita Cañas and has published in Spanish and English. Recent articles include:

• Abello Colak, A and Pearce, J. (2015) Securing the Global City? : An Analysis of the ‘Medellín Model’ through Participatory Research Conflict Security and Development 15 (3):197-228
• Abello Colak, A, and Guarneros, V. (2014) The Role of Criminal Actors in Neighbourhood Governance Urban Studies 51 (15): 3268-3289.

Email:  alabellocolak@gmail.com

Dr Chandra Morrison

Chandra holds a three-year Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. She received her PhD from the Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge, and is an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Latin American Studies in the School of Advanced Study, University of London.

Currently, she is completing a book manuscript based on nearly a decade of ethnographic research in the graffiti communities of São Paulo, Brazil and Santiago, Chile. Through its analysis of graffiti metareference, the study explores how graffiti art constructs new forms of sociality, movement, and valuation in Latin American cityscapes.

• Morrison, C. (2016) Jóvenes grafiter@s: Visibilidad aterradora: graffiti y juventud ‘violenta’ en São Paulo, in C. Feixa & P. Oliart (eds.) Juvenopedia: Mapeo de las juventudes latinoamericanas, NED Ediciones.

• Morrison, C. (2013) Colouring Pollution: ‘Cleaning’the City and ‘Recycling’ Social Values in São Paulo Street Art, in G. Kantaris & R. O’Bryen (eds), Latin American Popular Culture: Politics, Media, Affect, Tamesis Books.

Email: Chandra.morrison@gmail.com 

Personal Website 

Mtro. Emilio Garmendia Perez Montero

Emilio Garmendia Pérez Montero is an International Treasury Trader at Nacional Financiera S.N.C. (NAFIN), the Mexican 'green bank', and is the first recipient of the NAFIN fellowship hosted by the Latin America & Caribbean Centre and the Grantham Institute at the LSE. Emilio holds a Master’s Degree from UCAV Universidad Católica de Ávila (Zaragoza, Spain) and Bachelor Degrees in Economics, Markets and Cultures, and Foreign Languages from Southern Methodist University (Dallas, Texas).

In 2015, he participated in the issue of Mexico’s first Green Bond, positioning NAFIN as the first development bank in Latin America to issue this type of certified debt, meeting the environmental goals of the Mexican Government and marking a return to international markets after 18 years.

Email:  E.Garmendia-Perez-Montero@lse.ac.uk; egarmendia@nafin.gob.mx