New ideas, programs and fresh faces are playing a big role at the UCLA International Institute this academic year. Many of its programs have welcomed new directors, received new contributions, added new components and created new leadership positions.
Last fall, for example, the Latin American Institute (LAI) launched a new Program for Caribbean Studies, with the goal of going beyond the Spanish-speaking nations of the region to examine the commonalities among such diverse countries as Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The new program will build and expand on the activities of the Latin American Institute's Working Group on Cuba and the Caribbean.
"The Latin American Institute is excited to add this program to its three current centers, which focus on Brazil, Mexico and the Southern Cone, respectively,” said LAI Director Kevin Terraciano, historian of colonial Latin America at UCLA. “We are very lucky to welcome Robin Derby, a historian who specializes in the French and Spanish Caribbean, as the initial program chair,” he added. “I look forward to new and exciting programming in the coming months and years.”
Derby, associate professor of history at UCLA and author of the award-winning "The Dictator’s Seduction," is senior Caribbean editor of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. “I am delighted to be able to launch this new program under the aegis of LAI,” said Derby. “In view of the thaw in U.S.-Cuban ties, our timing could not be better.”
To read about other new developments taking place at the International Institute, see this story posted on its website.
