Francisco Panizza, from the Department of Government, has been awarded a grant through the Global Challenges Research Fund Impact Accelerator Account (IAA GCRF) to support the initial event for an Observatory on the Colombia Peace Process. The grant will fund an international workshop to take place in the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, in December 2016, as a first step towards the setting up of an Observatory on the peace process through the LACC. The purpose of the workshop will be to engage with Colombian academic and non- academic partners working on the peace process in order to present LSE academics' research expertise on topics related to the peace agenda and explore avenues for knowledge exchange, joint research and the dissemination of information with our Colombian partners. An extensive range of stakeholders are anticipated to be involved with the Observatory, including national and international policy-makers, civil society organisations, business groups and academics.
Funded by IAA GCRF.
PI: Professor Francisco Panizza (Government, LACC)
This is a 24 months project funded by the Newton Fund Initiative. With a budget of £829,267, this project aims at building a new approach to security provision in Mexico as an effective and equitable public good through a participatory methodology which brings together communities, civil society actors and state officials to co-construct security agendas/action plans from the 'ground up'. The project carried out by an international research team led by Professor Jenny Pearce involves the implementation, in four case study localities, of action oriented research methodologies developed by Professor Pearce and Dr. Alexandra Abello Colak from LSE and the Observatory of Human Security in Medellin. These localities (Tijuana, Apatzingan, Acapulco and Guadalupe) were selected for a range of variations in violence, criminality as well as socio economic context and political responses to insecurity in contemporary Mexico. The project will build practical and feasible strategies for addressing insecurity and violence in these localities and foster academic and policy debates around security in Mexico and in the global South. This research will advance debates on security and its complex relation with wider social and economic issues and on new approaches to security provision that might benefit all Mexicans and especially those who are more vulnerable to chronic violence.
Funded by ESRC Newton Fund.
PI: Professor Jenny Pearce (LACC)
Research Officer: Dr Alexandra Abello (LACC)
The Latin America and Caribbean Centre in collaboration with the United States Centre at LSE have been awarded IGA-Rockefeller Resilience Research seed funding for a project analysing the sources of the US-Cuba rapprochement, and how the process will impact Cuba’s indigenous economic reform programme. Project lead Helen Yaffe said “The US-Cuba rapprochement has the potential to transform Cuba’s political and economic environment, but it also creates new pressures on Cuba’s political and economic structures. The LSE is the perfect place to provide detached, authoritative study of the US-Cuba rapprochement, in what is a really exciting collaboration between two leading research centres.” Initial field research in Cuba will take place between December 2016 and January 2017.
Funded by The Rockefeller Foundation/Institute of Global Affairs
PI: Dr Helen Yaffe (Economic History, LACC), Dr Nick Kitchen (US Centre)
Francisco Panizza, from the Department of Government, has been awarded a £4,020 grant from the FAPESP-LSE fund, part of a joint research fund set up by the Research Councils UK (RCUK) and the Research Council of the State of São Paulo (FAPESP). Francisco will use the funds to work with Drs George Avelino and Sergio Praça rom the Fundação Getulio Vargas (São Paulo, Brazil) on a research project on the politics of patronage appointments in Brazil. Drs Avelino and Praça have been awarded a similar amount by FAPESP. The project is part of wider collaborative research on the relations between political institutions, the politics of patronage appointments and the quality of the public administration in Latin America directed by professors Panizza, B. Guy Peters (Pittsburgh) and Conrado Ramos (Universidad de la República, Montevideo) with the participation of scholars from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Mexico.
Funded by FAPESP-LSE
PI: Professor Francisco Panizza (Government, LACC) & George Avelino Filho (Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo/FGVSP)
Mexico has a variety of climate change and clean energy targets included in its Climate Change Law and Intended Nationally Determined Contributions of the Climate Change Paris Agreement. NAFIN, as a development bank, has been a crucial institution in financing Mexico’s low carbon transition. This project aims to develop and improve existing financial products to strengthen future operations and promote innovative practices within NAFIN. It will do so by analysing the effectiveness of a variety of financing instruments that can be used to provide finance in the low carbon sector as well as combined-cycle projects. Instruments include green bonds, credit lines for sustainable projects, syndicated loans, first and second floor credits, MTN programmes, structured financing, CKD's, capital investment, co-financing, leasing and grants, as well as fiscal, political and social incentives. The objective will be to contribute to NAFIN’s decision-making process by comparing and understanding how to choose the most appropriate funding sources and effective use of instruments and treasury management for each project with low carbon/sustainable potential. This will result in strengthening NAFIN’s reputation as the leading development bank in Latin America promoting and financing environmental efforts. It will also lead to financial innovation resulting in better transfer prices for the development of MSMEs, clean technologies and large scale sustainable projects in the medium term, maximising thus the profitability of the Institution. The project is a collaboration between the Latin America and Caribbean Centre and The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, funded for three years by NAFIN.
Funded by NAFIN
PI: Mtro. Emilio Garmendia Pérez Montero
As a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow 2017-2020, Dr. Chandra Morrison will pursue the project New Muralism and the Politics of Erasure: A Study of Public Culture in Peru based at LSE’s Latin America and Caribbean Centre. Taking as its focal point the city government’s erasure of 45 murals from the historic centre of Lima in 2015, this research investigates what the rise and removal of new muralism signals about the state of public culture in contemporary Peru. The project pursues a discourse-oriented ethnography to examine how disparate framings of urban murals in the public sphere are used to reinforce or challenge cultural hierarchies and social inequalities in Peruvian society, contextualised in the ascent of democracy, neoliberalism, and the creative city.
Funded by The Leverhulme Trust
PI: Dr Chandra Morrison (LACC)
(Credits - Mural: Jade Rivera – Photo: Chandra Morrison)