Molly passed her PhD viva in May 2022 under the supervision of Dr Tanya Harmer. She holds a BA in History from Christ’s College, Cambridge, and an MSc in History of International Relations from LSE. Aside from her research, she was a co-convener for the HY510 LSE-Sciences Po Research Seminar in Contemporary International History until December 2019.
Thesis title
The Southern Cone and Central America: International and Transnational Anticommunist Networks in Guatemala and El Salvador, 1977-1984
Molly’s thesis addresses Latin American international and transnational anticommunist networks during the Cold War, with a particular focus on the connections between the anticommunist dictatorships in Chile and Argentina and the Extreme Right in Guatemala and El Salvador, 1977-1984. Drawing on source material from Chile, Argentina and Paraguay, as well as archives and interviews in Central America, the United States, and the United Kingdom, this research seeks to provide an as-of-yet understudied Latin American perspective to the international history of the conflicts in Central America. Taking the independence of Latin American anticommunist ideology as its starting point, the thesis uses the connections between the Southern Cone and Central America to explore the history of the Latin American Extreme Right more broadly in this period, ranging from the Extreme Right’s response to the rise of the international human rights movement to its fractious relationship with the United States, as well as the importance of non-state actors in the wider transnational anticommunist network.