Thesis title

'Resistance, Dignity and Purpose: Encountering ‘Self-Determination’ and ‘Development’ with a Garífuna Community in Honduras' [provisional title]

Supervisors

Dr Richard Martin (Law), Dr Harry Walker (Anthropology)

Research interests/areas

human rights law, law and anthropology, collective rights, moral philosophy, political philosophy

Leonardo’s research explores the creation of actor-networks through human rights litigation, with emphasis on indigenous and tribal rights. His project looks ethnographically at the construction of the ‘people’ as a rights-holder, considering how basic concepts of collective human rights —such as ‘dignity’, ‘self-determination’ and ‘development’— are made available, used, and reconfigured through multi-actor processes of rights-centred mobilisation. His research is interdisciplinary, employing socio-legal and anthropological theory and methods to ground the participant observation of a struggle for self-determination in Northern Honduras.

Leonardo holds a Master of Laws degree from the LSE (with distinction in all subjects) and a Título de Abogado from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras (first in cohort). He has worked with the Indigenous Peoples and Minorities Section of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and with the Case Division of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights. In Honduras he worked as a legal officer for the Norwegian Refugee Council, the penitentiary system and the judiciary.

His studies are funded with a PhD Studentship awarded by the Department of Law of the LSE.