Ana Cara is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Hispanic Studies at Oberlin College . A folklorist by training, Dr. Cara is interested in the relationship among traditional culture, music and literature. Her work at CLAS focused on Jorge Luis Borges’ milonga poems and the popular/folk Argentine tradition upon which these song verses are modeled as well as the theoretical issues related to creolization in Latin America and the Caribbean . She is the co-editor of the forthcoming volume Creolization: Cultural Creativity in Process.

Márcio Holland is Professor of Economics at the Federal University of Uberlândia, Brazil and a researcher in international economics for the National Council for Scientific and Technical Development (CNPq). He has spent the last six years studying the economies of Latin American nations, especially the balance-of-payments constraints on long-run economic growth and the exchange rate determination.

Roberto Castro, a medical sociologist, leads the research program “Society and Health” at the Regional Center for Multidisciplinary Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Cuernavaca. His major publications include Life in Adversity: The Meaning of Health and Reproduction Among the Poor (2000) and Violence Against Pregnant Women. Three Sociological Studies (2004). His current research focuses on the sociological determinants of violence against women in Mexico.

Estela Neves, Brazil

Estela Neves is an environmental planner affiliated with the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janerio. She specializes in environmental policies and management, particularly at the local government level. Originally trained as an architect and urban planner, Neves has 18 years of professional experience in environmental planning and has worked as a consultant with the World Bank, United Nations and various government ministries in Brazil. She is currently at Berkeley researching environmental policies and municipal development in Brazil.

Marcos Novaro earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires and is a specialist in Constitutional Law and Political Science. He is currently directing an investigation titled “Two Decades of Democracy in Argentina — Creation of an Oral History Archive,” funded by the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas and by the Fondo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología. Previously he worked as a consultant for the United Nations Development Program.

Kirsten Sehnbruch
Kirsten Sehnbruch has just completed her Ph.D. on the Chilean Labor Market at Cambridge University. She has spent the last five years researching the labor market in Chile and has worked as a consultant to the Chilean government on a range of issues related to the labor market, the new unemployment insurance and the pension system.

She presented a discussion on the Chilean labor market as part of the Bay Area Latin American Forum this spring.

Lavinia Barros de Castro, Brazil

Lavinia Barros de Castro is an economist at the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) and teaches Brazilian Economic History at the Brazilian Institute of Capital Markets (IBMEC), Rio de Janeiro. She is a doctoral student in social sciences in the Post-Graduate Program in Development, Agriculture and Society at the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (CPDA – UFRRJ) and has recently written and organized a book on Brazilian economic history (2004). Currently, she is doing research for her dissertation on investment finance in economic development, comparing the evolution of the Brazilian and Korean financial systems during the period 1960–2000.

Rodrigo Sabbatini teaches international and Brazilian economics at the Faculdades de Campinas, Brazil. A doctoral student in economics at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), he is at Berkeley researching the potential effects of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) on the Brazilian economy, concentrating on foreign direct investment and multinational corporations.

Luisa Farah Schwartzman, United States

Luisa Farah Schwartzman is a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is currently doing research for her dissertation on the implementation of affirmative action policies in Brazil and how they relate to the national public debate on race and social inequality. Before starting her Ph.D., Luisa received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and completed a master’s program in Latin American studies at Stanford.