Professor Chris Alden
Director of the Global South Unit
Professor in international Relations, LSE
Email: j.c.alden@lse.ac.uk
Web: LSE Experts, Publications
Professor in International Relations, LSE; Director of LSE-IDEAS Africa Programme; and a former Programme Head, Global Powers and Africa, South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA). He is author/co-author of numerous books and reports, including The South and World Politics (Palgrave 2010), China and Latin America (CLSA 2009), China in Africa (Zed 2007), and co-editor of China Returns to Africa (Hurst 2008), Japan and South Africa (Ashgate 2003) as well as articles in internationally recognised journals. He has contributed to research, conferences and publications on the South African foreign policy since 1991, the changing role of China and Africa since 1992 and China and Latin America since 2007. He has conducted consultancies for the World Bank, the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, CLSA, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Standard Bank (SA) and Rand Merchant Bank (SA) amongst others.
Dr. Alvaro Mendez
Senior Research Fellow, LSE
Email: a.mendez@lse.ac.uk
Web: LSE Experts, Media Appearances, Publications
Dr. Alvaro Mendez is the co-founder of the LSE Global South Unit. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the LSE; Senior Lecturer at Regent's University London; Research Associate, University of Bristol; and a former editor of Millennium-Journal of International Studies at the LSE. Dr. Mendez has also taught at the University of Shanghai, the Singapore Institute of Management, Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, and Universidad del Pacifico in Lima, Peru. He won the 2003-2004 Departmental Teaching Prize in recognition of his contribution to teaching International Relations at the LSE. He is the co-author of UN Security Council Reform and the Challenge of South Representation (SAIIA 2009). He is regularly called upon to contribute to research conferences and the press his insights on the emergence of Latin America as an important actor in world politics. A monograph about US Foreign Policy in Latin America is forthcoming in 2016 with Routledge. He is currently co-authoring a major study on the foreign relations of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Mexico with respect to China.
Dr. Caroline Varin
Research Fellow, Global South Unit Email: c.l.varin@lse.ac.uk
Web: Publications
Lecturer in Security and International Organisations at Regent's University London, and program coordinator at the Global South Unit LSE). Dr. Varin is the author of Mercenaries, Hybrid Armies and National Security: Private Soldiers and the State in the 21st Century (Routledge 2014) and is co-editor of the Global South Unit Working Paper Series. She contributes regularly to conferences on topics relating to security and warfare, and has conducted research for the UNHCR in Jordan. Dr. Varin previously worked in intelligence analysis, and continues to undertake consultancies on public relations and social media for various agencies.