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People

More than 350 faculty from across Cornell come together at the Einaudi Center to imagine and conduct global research. Over 150 graduate and undergraduate students find resources, inspiration, and a global scholarly community through Einaudi's eight regional and thematic programs and minors.

Professor, Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Héctor D. Abruña is interested in development and characterization of new materials using a wide variety of techniques for fuel cells, batteries, and molecular assemblies for molecular electronics.

Professor, Entomology

Arthur Agnello is the primary contributor to the development and implementation of the fruit program area plan of work that addresses the needs of diverse audience groups.

Assistant Professor Department of Global Labor at Work

Santiago Anria is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Labor and Work at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He studies the relationships between Latin American social movements, labor unions, and political parties.

Professor, History
Edward Baptist coleads the Einaudi Center's inequalities, identities, and justice global research priority.
William Nelson Cromwell Professor Emeritus, Law School

John Barceló is interested in international commercial arbitration, trade agreements, European Union law, and international law. He has been principally responsible for developing Cornell's international legal studies program over several decades.

Director, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program
Ernesto Bassi Arevalo is an associate professor of history in the College of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on the role circulation (of goods, people, news, and ideas) plays in the configuration of geographic spaces and political allegiances.
Assistant Professor, Music

Jean Bernard Cerin is a multifaceted artist and scholar who produces and performs in projects ranging from film, recital, oratorio, opera, and folk music. Praised for his “burnished tone and focused phrasing” (Chestnut Hill Local).

Associate Professor, Literatures in English

Mary Pat Brady is interested in Chicana and latinx literature, film, and culture; American literature; critical geography; and queer and critical race theory.

Professor, History

Judith Byfield’s primary research focus is women's social and economic history in Nigeria. Her research includes in-depth studies on tie-dye production, World War II, Nigerian women's political activism and nationalism.

Senior Lecturer of Management; Director, Emerging Markets Institute, S. C. Johnson Graduate School of Management
Lourdes Casanova’s work focuses on environmental policy, government, politics, and policy studies as well as emerging multinationals from Brazil and Latin America.
Faculty Advisor, Migration Studies Minor
Debra Castillo is Emerson Hinchliff Chair of Hispanic Studies and professor of comparative literature. She is faculty director of the Einaudi Center's migration studies minor.
Andrew H. and James S. Tisch Professor, Global Devolopment

Geographic Research Area: South Asia

Teaching/Research Interests: Agricultural biotechnology, intellectual property, international agriculture, international development, and plant breeding and genetics

Associate Professor, History of Art and Visual Studies

Ananda Cohen-Aponte works on the visual culture of colonial Latin America, with special interests in issues of cross-cultural exchange, historicity, identity, and anti-colonial movements.

Assistant Professor of Latin American Literature

Liliana Colanzi's research focuses on popular genres in modern and contemporary Latin American literature (science fiction, horror, the fantastic); she also teaches creative writing workshops. She has edited La desobediencia, antología de ensayo…

Senior Lecturer, Labor Relations, Law, and History

Lance Compa is interested in international law, human rights, worker’s rights, and studies of workers' rights in the United States. He has conducted workers' rights investigations and reports on Cambodia, Chile, China, Haiti, Guatemala, Mexico, and Sri Lanka among…

Professor Emeritus, International and Comparative Labor

Maria Cook is interested in labor rights and labor law reform in Latin America; labor unions and democratization in Mexico; transnational movements, trade, and regional integration; unauthorized migration and migrant advocacy; and comparative immigration policies.…

Visiting Scholar ’22-’23

David Cordero-Heredia,  J.S.D. ’18 is an Associate Professor of Law, at Universidad Católica del Ecuador currently visiting Cornell University as Visiting Fellow of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program.

Clinical Professor, Cornell Law School

Angela Cornell is the founding director of the Labor Law Clinic and teaches Labor Law, Practice and Policy as well as related courses. She has extensive experience in the field of labor and employment law, immigrant workers and international labor law.

LACS Graduate Fellow ‘23-‘24

María Paula Corredor Acosta is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History. Her research focuses on pirates, sailors, and fishers in the Caribbean during the Age of Revolution. 

Marie Underhill Noll Professor, History

Raymond Craib's research and teaching interests revolve around the intersections of space, politics, and everyday practice. He is especially interested in Latin America and/as global history, critical geography/cartography, the left, and theory and history.

Professor Emeritus, Crop and Soil Sciences

Stephen DeGloria is interested in resource inventory, mapping, and analysis; remote sensing; geographic information science and technology; and soil survey, interpretations, and conservation.

Professor, Psychology

Timothy Devoogd studies how the brains of birds encode learned behaviors like song or memory for food locations. Particular questions now being studied include the neural basis for female song discrimination, and the interplay between the hippocampus and other brain…

Director, Cornell Farmworker Program; Senior Extension Associate, Global Development

Mary Jo Dudley is the Director of the Cornell Farmworker Program (a collaborative effort of CALS, CHE and CCE), and a faculty member of the Department of Global Development.

LACS Graduate Fellow ‘23-‘24

Malembe Dumont Copero is a first-year Ph.D. student in City and Regional Planning, working at the intersection of critical approaches to health justice.

Professor Emeritus, Soil and Crop Sciences

John Duxbury is interested in applied science knowledge to meet global needs in agriculture and the environment.

Professor Emeritus, Africana Studies and Research Center 

Locksley Edmondson specializes in international relations (especially concerning Africa and the Caribbean) and race relations (especially concerning the Black World).

LACS Graduate Fellow ‘23-‘24

Juliana Fagua Arias is a Ph.D. student in the History of Art and Visual Studies department. Her research focuses on the material culture of the early modern transpacific trade and specifically on the cross-cultural effects of the trade between Asia and Latin America…

Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor, Natural Resources and the Environment

Timothy Fahey is interested in the ecology of temperate and tropical montane forests with special interest in root and mycorrhizal dynamics.

Professor Emerita, Anthropology 

Jane Fajans' research interests are food and identity, ritual and socialization, personhood, emotion, and adoption. Her research areas are mainly located in Papua New Guinea and Brazil.

Associate Professor, History of Art and Visual Studies 

María Fernández’s research and teaching concern three areas and their intersections: the history and theory of digital and new media art, postcolonial and gender studies and Latin American art and architecture.

Associate Professor of the Practice, Global Development

Julie Ficarra specializes in critical approaches to partnership development centered on mutuality, reciprocity, and solidarity-building, particularly in university/community relationships that support engaged learning.

John P. Windmuller Professor, Labor Relations and Economics

Gary Fields is the John P. Windmuller Professor of International and Comparative Labor and Professor of Economics. His work focuses on Labor Economics, Development Economics, and Public Economics. He is especially interested in the cases of Mexico, Argentina, and…

Assistant Professor, Nutrition

Roger Figueroa is interested in the interconnections between the social and behavioral determinants of health, with a particular focus on children’s energy-balance behaviors in underrepresented and low-income communities.

Visiting Scholar ‘18-‘23

David Flaten is a LACS visiting scholar and History professor at Tompkins Cortland Community College. He is researching the opportunities to create a global history course centered around the Caribbean for students at our partner institution Tompkins Cortland…

Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology 

The research in Alexander S. Flecker’s lab is at the interface between community and ecosystem ecology and aims to understand the functional significance of biodiversity.

Professor, Government

Gustavo Flores-Macías' research and teaching interests include a variety of topics related to political and economic development. Currently, his research focuses on the politics of economic reform and taxation and state capacity.

Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies

Carolyn Fornoff’s research explores cultural responses to the environmental crisis in Latin America, with a particular focus on Mexico and Central America. It asks how art helps narrate and make sense of problems like climate change that are temporally expansive and…

Assistant Professor of Practice

Elizabeth L.

Associate Professor of Practice, Public & Ecosystem Health

Lorraine Francis is a public health professional with extensive knowledge of Caribbean health systems from over eighteen years of regional experience in several public health areas including epidemiology, surveillance, emergency and outbreak response, laboratory…

Professor, History

Paul Friedland is a historian of France, specializing in the Revolutionary period, but is broadly interested in European culture, politics, and ideas over the span of the long 18th century and in the interplay of ideas and culture between the metropole and the…

Professor Emeritus, Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology 

William Fry is interested in plant disease epidemiology, population genetics studies, genetics, and host pathogen interactions using genomics approaches.

Senior Research Associate, Plant Biology

Maria A. Gandolfo is interested in paleobotany and plant anatomy and morphology with an emphasis on plant evolution and development, origin of angiosperms, cretaceous and tertiary floras, and paleoclimate of North and South America.

Howard A. Newman Professor, History

Maria Cristina Garcia, a 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, studies refugees, immigrants, and exiles. Her most recent book is The Refugee Challenge in Post-Cold War America (Oxford University Press, 2017), a study of the actors and interests that have shaped US refugee…

Senior Lecturer and Curator, Anthropology

Frederic W. Gleach is interested in native North America; Puerto Rico and Cuba; textual, material and visual culture; museums, heritage and tourism.

Professor Emeritus, City and Regional Planning

William Goldsmith is interested in U.S. cities, segregation, and poverty, and also on international urbanization and regional development. He has taught in Puerto Rico, Colombia, and Brazil.

Associate Professor, Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics & Management

Miguel I. Gómez concentrates his research program on two interrelated areas under the umbrella of food marketing and distribution. The first is Food Value Chains Competitiveness and Sustainability.

Retired Associate Professor
Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies

Vanessa Gubbins is an Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies in the Department of Romance Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale University.

Professor Emeritus, Global Development

Douglas Gurak is interested in the process of human migration. He is currently involved in the investigation of processes shaping the internal migration of foreign-born persons in the United States to non-traditional immigration destinations.

Professor Emeritus, Maternal and Child Nutrition

Jere Haas is interested in the functional consequences of iron deficiency on physical and cognitive performance, emphasis on the effects of moderate iron deficiency on various aspects of physical performance and behavior in children and young women and how measures…

Professor, Anthropology

John S. Henderson’s research interests center on early complex societies and how archaeology can explore the processes through which they develop. How do distinctions in status, wealth, and authority emerge within and between communities? Under what circumstances do…

J. Preston Levis Professor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Teresa Jordan is interested in climate and hydrological history of the Atacama Desert of Chile, and on finding more environmentally benign ways to meet society's needs for energy using subsurface resources.

Professor, Natural Resource Policy and Management

Barbara Knuth is interested in the social science and policy dimensions of ecosystem-based management in Great Lakes and marine systems, risk communication and management associated with chemical contaminants in fish, and environmental stewardship related to…

Associate Professor, Applied Economics and Management

Steven Kyle is an associate professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. He works in the areas of macroeconomic policy in the United States and in low-income countries.

Professor Emeritus and Graduate School Professor, Natural Resources

James P. Lassoie is interested in international conservation and sustainable development in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Canada, and the United States.

Senior Lecturer and Stephen H. Weiss Provost’s Teaching Fellow, Romance Studies

Cecelia Lawless teaches both language and literature/film courses as a senior lecturer. For several years, she was the faculty fellow for the Spanish Language House at Alice Cook.

Professor, Applied Economics and Management 

David Lee is interested in economic development, agriculture, and the environment, including food security, sustainable agriculture, technology adoption, environmental services, climate change, and agricultural and environmental policy.

Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor, Soil and Crop Sciences

Johannes Lehmann is interested in soil biogeochemistry, fertility management, organic matter, and carbon and nutrient cycling from wastes; Soil carbon sequestration and biochar systems; Sustainable agriculture in the tropics.

Senior Lecturer, Spanish and Romance Studies

Nilsa Maldonado-Mendez's interests include feminism and religion in Spanish-speaking countries, teaching Spanish to heritage speakers, history, and women writers in the Spanish-speaking Americas.

Associate Professor, Labor Relations, Law, and History

Veronica Martínez-Matsuda’s research agenda is motivated by the following central questions: How do those excluded from the legal and everyday rights of American citizenship because of their political status, racial identity, or class standing as low-wage workers,…

Administrative Assistant
LACS Graduate Fellow ‘23-‘24

Steven McCutcheon Rubio is a Ph.D. Student in Development Studies. His research focuses on agrarian change and rural social movements in contemporary Latin America, particularly Mexico. He is also a book review editor for the Journal of Agriculture,…

LACS Visiting Scholar

Originally from Quito, Ecuador, Martin Mejia Carrillo is a PhD Candidate (ABD) at Tulane University and a lecturer in Politics at Universidad de Palermo. In the LACS program, he is a visiting doctoral intern for fall 2023, working under the supervision of Kenneth…

Associate Professor, Comparative Literature; Institute of Comparative Modernities; Literatures in English

Natalie Melas' interests range across Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean literature and thought, modern Greek, modern French and modern English poetry, comparison, modernism and colonialism, modern reconfigurations of antiquity, Homer, Césaire, Cavafy,…

Professor Emeritus, Horticulture
Visiting Critic
Nicaraguan political cartoonist Pedro X. Molina was an Artist Protection Fund fellow in the Einaudi Center’s Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) and continues his engagement as a visiting critic.
Associate Professor Emeritus, Horticulture

Jane Mt. Pleasant's research interests include indigenous agriculture and plants and well-being. She is a national expert in Iroquois agriculture.

Associate Professor, Anthropology and Asian American Studies

Viranjini Munasinghe's research interests focus on nationalism, race and ethnicity, creolization and indigeneity, Asian American Studies, South Asian Diaspora, Labor and Political Economy of Plantation Societies, Historical Anthropology, Anthropological Theory,…

Associate Professor, Anthropology

Alex Nading is a medical and environmental anthropologist. His research, mostly focused on Nicaragua, has examined transnational campaigns against dengue fever, bacterial disease, and chronic kidney disease, as well as grassroots movements to address these issues.…

Professor, Integrative Plant Science
My interests and objectives pertain to plant pathology, plant breeding and international agriculture. I serve as Scientific Director for The McKnight Foundation's Collaborative Crop Research Program (CCRP), a competitive grants program that funds agricultural research…
Lecturer, Romance Studies

Denise M. Osborne is a lecturer in Portuguese in the Department of Romance Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching from the University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), and her M.A. in Applied Linguistics from Teachers College Columbia…

Administrative Assistant

Lilian Griselda Pagoada Antunez received her B.S. in International Business from Nacional Autonoma University – Honduras, and her Master's in Business with – a concentration in Marketing from UNITEC – Honduras. She was a Business Development Executive for Kimberly-…

Professor, Romance Studies

Edmundo Paz-Soldan is winner of the Bolivian National Book Award (1992 and 2003), and the Juan Rulfo Short Story Award (1997).

Outreach Manager
Professor Emerita, Animal Science
Visiting Professor, Nutritional Sciences

Gretel Pelto is interested in the interaction between theory and practice brings social science methods, particularly those of ethnography, to bear on nutrition and child health research, with an emphasis on infant and young child nutrition.

Senior Lecturer, Applied Economics and Management

Pedro David Perez is interested in entrepreneurship and innovation, ethics, active learning and the "flipped" classroom, methodologies, and case study methodology. 

LACS Graduate Fellow ‘23-‘24

Ranya Perez is a Ph.D. student in socio-cultural anthropology. She is interested in exploring the relationship between community gardens/farms and solidarity.

Professor, Global Development

Max Pfeffer's research interests include community development, international migration, agricultural labor, rural labor markets, land use and environmental planning, and primary data collection and field research with a particular emphasis on rural/urban fringe…

Professor, Romance Studies

Simone Pinet's teaching and research focus on medieval and early modern Spanish literatures and cultures, from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, especially in relation to spatiality, economics, poetics, and translation.

Associate Professor, Musicology

Steven Pond's research interests include jazz, and music of the African Diaspora. He is an active percussionist and drummer and director of Cornell’s Brazilian music group, Deixa Sambar.

Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Alison Power's research interests include the ecology and epidemiology of plant pathogens transmitted by insects; disease systems in the northeast U.S., in Central America, and in Thailand.

Visiting Scholar ‘21-‘23

Annette is an Associate Professor at Ithaca College where she teaches courses on Latin American literature, theatre, and translation.

Professor, Maternal and Child Nutrition

Kathleen Rasmussen's research interests include studies in experimental species, observational and intervention studies in human subjects in the US and several developing countries, and epidemiologic studies based on data from medical records and large cohorts.…

Senior Lecturer, Spanish Language

Mary K. Redmond's research interests include Spanish for heritage speakers, applied linguistics, the pedagogies of language teaching, second language acquisition theory, and issues of multilingualism.

Richard J. Schwartz Professor, Government
Kenneth Roberts leads the Einaudi Center's democratic threats and resilience global research priority in academic years 2022–24.
Garvin Professor of Ornithology (on sabbatical AY ’22-’23)

Amanda Rodewald’s research and interests focus on population and community responses to changes in land use, climate, invasive species, and disturbance regimes; socioecological dynamics and conservation in working landscapes; eco-evolutionary dynamics in human-…

James A. Perkins Professor

Eloy Rodriguez is a research scientist of chemical biology, ecology and medicinal chemistry, and toxicology of natural small molecules and glycoproteins from plants and arthropods that are important in ecological and biological interactions and human and animal…

LACS Graduate Fellow ’21-‘24

Leonardo Santamaría-Montero is a PhD student in the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies. He is interested in the study of 19th century Central American visual and material culture, with a focus on indigenous aesthetics and their representations.

Associate Professor, Anthropology

Vilma Santiago-Irizarry’s research has focused on the unintended consequences, paradoxes, and contradictions generated in the articulation and deployment of ethnoracial identity constructs, particularly in the United States and in institutional settings, where they…

Assistant Professor, History

Casey Schmitt is a historian of early America and the Caribbean, with particular interests in human trafficking, colonization, and illicit economies over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Professor, Integrative Plant Science, Plant Breeding and Genetics Section

Since August 2020, Margaret Smith has served as the director of the Cornell Agricultural Experiment Station and associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Her research is primarily on field corn, but also includes work on sweet corn.…

LACS Graduate Fellow ‘23-‘24

Waleska Solórzano is a Ph.D. student of Hispanic Studies in the Department of Romance Studies. Waleska primarily researches aesthetic manifestations of the Venezuelan diaspora, or what she terms the Venespora, vis-à-vis queer artistic practices.

Professor, Biological and Environmental Engineering

Tammo Steenhuis’s research is carried out over a trillion-fold scale range, from the transport of micro particles in soil pores to the effect of human interventions in the landscape on transport of water and sediment in large river basins.  He…

Senior Lecturer, Spanish Language

Brisa Teutli's areas of interest include web-enhanced and computer-assisted instruction, material development, teaching methods, learning strategies, language lab operation, teacher training, and study abroad.

LACS Graduate Fellow ‘23-‘24

Amandla Thomas-Johnson is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Literatures in English, focusing on the literary activism and global solidarity that coalesced around the Grenadian revolution in the Caribbean.

LACS Graduate Fellow '19-'24

Rafael Torralvo is a violinist and musicologist whose academic research focuses on the intersection between music, literature, and politics to analyze the construction of national identity in Brazil during the military dictatorship (1964-1985).

Assistant Professor, Romance Studies

Irina Troconis’s areas of specialization include: Memory Studies, Venezuelan Studies, Politics and Performance, Affect Theory, and Digital Humanities.

Program Manager

Luke Urbain (they/them, él/ellx) received their Ph.D. from UW-Madison, where they focused on art, literature, and visual culture of Cuba and the Cuban diaspora and were an affiliated graduate student in the Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies…

Professor, School of Integrative Plant Science Soil and Crop Sciences Section

Harold van Es is a Professor of Soil and Water Management with extension, research and teaching duties.