Keynote Speakers
Prof. Brett Levinson
Binghamton University (SUNY)
Brett Levinson is a Professor of Comparative Literature at the State University of New York, and author of three books: Secondary Moderns, on Lezama Lima; The Ends of Literature, on the Latin American “boom”; and Market and Thought, on contemporary philosophy and politics. He has also published more than fifty articles on literature, theory, and Latin American culture.
Keynote: Neoliberalism's Proper Name for Branding
The idea of branding is bound to the questions of the "proper name" and of the "author", key theoretical issues of structuralism, and for the Marxist understanding of the commodity, as the two schools ernerged in 1960s and 1970s. Prof. Levinson will be discussing this relationship by showing how the difference between "being branded" and "branding oneself" does not introduce two positions (one submissive, one resistant) but forms the binary that orients the capitalist ideology, particularly within Latin American neoliberalism.
Dr. Stephanie Dennison
University of Leeds
Stephanie Dennison is Reader in Brazilian Studies at the University of Leeds. She is coauthor of two monographs on Brazilian cinema (Popular Cinema in Brazil, MUP 2004 and Brazilian National Cinema, Routledge 2007). She coedited Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics on Film, Wallflower 2006 and Latin American Cinema: Essays on Modernity, Gender and National Identity, MacFarland 2005. She was coeditor of cinema journal New Cinemas (Intellect) 2010-11. She edited Contemporary Hispanic Cinema: Interrogating the Transnational in Spanish and Latin American Film, Tamesis 2013 and World Cinema: as novas cartografias do cinema mundial, Papirus, 2013. She is currently working on a collaborative project examining the role of film in the softpower strategies of BRICS nations.
Keynote: Branding Latin America: The View From/Of Brazil
Looking predominantly but not exclusively at film production, my paper will consider 21st century nation-branding in Brazil, and in particular the relationship between Brazil and Latin America. I examine the notion of an existence of a Latin American audio-visual brand, the extent to which Brazilian state and non-state actors appear to buy into such a notion, and the possible implications of branding film production in the region.
Invited Speakers
Charlie Methven
Dragon Associates
Charlie Methven is the founder of Dragon Associates and provides top level strategic counsel to major UK and international clients. In 2014 Charlie was named as one of the UK's top ten reputation managers by UK business magazine Spear's WMS.
He began his career in journalism, spending ten years writing for national newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph. Charlie founded Dragon Associates in 2011 and is also a trustee of the Oxford United Football Club Youth and Community Trust.
Rodolfo Milesi
Branding Latin America (PR Company)
Rodolfo Milesi is the founder of Branding Latin America, a London-based PR company whose principal aim is to bridge business and promotional interests between Latin America, the United Kingdom and the rest of the world.
Formerly an executive producer on one of Argentina's top public affairs and politics programmes, Rodolfo was sent to the nation’s embassy in London as press attaché in 2002, and told to help rebuild bridges with the UK’s most influential media following Argentina's financial meltdown. This experience led to the idea for a PR company dedicated to the Latin American region, which first materialised as part of Bell Pottinger. Since 2008, Branding Latin America has been a firm in its own right.
Speakers
Alexandra Nitz
Bielefeld University
Since 2011 Alexandra Nitz is enrolled as a doctoral researcher in sociology at Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology at Bielefeld University, Germany. Her research interest includes transnational studies with a thematic focus on student mobility and a regional focus on Latin America. The topic of her dissertation is the mobility of international students at universities in Colombia and Brazil. She earned a bachelor of arts in Sociology from the University of Konstanz in 2007 and a Master of Arts in Sociology from Bielefeld University in 2010.
Prof. Andrew Ginger
University of Bristol
Andrew is Chair of Iberian & Latin American Studies at the University of Bristol, having previously been Chair of Hispanic Studies at Stirling, where he also held a range of roles including Head of School, and member of the University Policy and Planning Committee. Andrew is a historian of the culture of Spain and the Spanish-speaking Atlantic, taking a highly comparativist approach. Since his first appointment as a lecturer in Edinburgh (1996), he has published four monographs, two edited collections, and numerous essays. These present a view of the Spanish-speaking world – particularly the nineteenth century - as politically, intellectually, and culturally advanced. Andrew's central thematic concern is with the nature and significance of similarities across place and time, taking as my starting point the connections between the Spanish-speaking world and the West. He has founded and co-lead an international network of over 180 researchers over two continents in nineteenth-century studies. His work ranges from political, scientific, and aesthetic thought through visual culture and literature. He has held numerous national roles including REF subpanel member, AHRC strategic reviewer, and chair of UCML Scotland.
Andrea Paz Cerda Pereira
Leiden University
Andrea Cerda studied Sociology at the Universidad Católica de Chile (2000). For her MA in Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam (2003) she studied social and political participation practices of Chilean youth after the dictatorship (1990’s), and the policies flaws intended to encourage youth participation. Then she conducted a MA research project in Cultural Anthropology at Leiden (2009), were she focused on the ethical dilemmas experienced by volunteers participating in aid programs set up by the industry of tourism in India. Currently she is doing her Ph.D. on the Chilean Exhibit for the World Expo of Shanghai 2010. For this study she followed the production of the display and making of the national pavilion ethnographically. In her Ph.D. she reflects on communities imagined along branding technologies and the way in which nations are being promoted, at large, today.
Dr. Ayumi Takenaka
University of Oxford
Ayumi Takenaka is a Research Officer at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) of the University of Oxford. Before joining COMPAS in 2013, she served on the Sociology Faculty at Bryn Mawr College in the US. Her current research focuses on global onward migration (or multiple migration of immigrants), Latin American migration to Spain, the US and Japan, and Peruvian gastronomy and restaurants around the world.
Carla Moscoso
University of Cambridge
Carla Moscoso hold an undergraduate degree in sociology and a MA in Political Communication from the University of Chile. She also got an MPhil in Modern Societies and Global Transformations from the University of Cambridge and she is currently studying a PhD in sociology in the same university. Her academic specialization has led her to study the social impact of the media and their effects in the constitution of democracy and citizenship in developing countries, with a special focus on Latin America. Following this, her PhD research attempts to link the growing media ownership concentration with the process of political democratisation that took place in Chile and Argentina during the post-dictatorship. In terms of professional experience, she has worked in the Chilean Ministry of Governmental Affairs, the UNDP Chile, the National Council for Television, and the Council for the Transparency conducting research on the right of access to information and perceptions of democracy at the national level.
César Jiménez Martínez
LSE
César Jiménez-Martínez is a doctoral candidate in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on issues of media and nationalism, particularly on how several groups advance their own representations of national identity in order to advance their agendas, as well as to how these representations are limited or encouraged by the political economy of the media. His work has been published by the International Journal of Communication, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Liinc em Revista, and he is currently preparing a chapter for an upcoming edited book about global perspectives on media events.
Dr. Elvira Antón Carillo
University of Roehampton
Senior Lecturer in Spanish at the University of Roehampton, in charge of socio-cultural modules of the Degree in Spanish, Convener for Modern Languages and Director of the Hispanic Research Centre. As the Hispanic Research Centre’s director in charge of the research environment, organising a series of seminars and events at the Centre. Visiting researcher at the UNAM (México City) and UCLA. Main research interests focus on Spain, Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly in what concerns identity in the media and visual arts. She is currently researching aspects related to language and society, discourse, race and racism, nation and nationalism, culture and identity, and has published widely on those topics. Elvira's current project ‘Spaces of (Dis)location: On becoming ‘latino’ in London and Madrid’, analyses the construction of identity in ‘latino’ media discourses in the two cities.
Félix Lossio Chávez
University of Newcastle
Former General Director of Cultural Industries and Arts at the Ministry of Culture in Peru and former Executive Coordinator for the Network for the Development of Social Sciences in Peru (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú - Instituto de Estudios Peruanos -Universidad del Pacífico). MSc in Sociology (Culture and Society) by The London School of Economics and Political Science. BA in Sociology by the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, where he was lecturer at the Social Sciences Department. Several articles published in areas related to cultural industries, cultural policies, film studies and social participation. He is currently a PhD (candidate) in Latin American Studies at The University of Newcastle, carrying out research about nation branding in contemporary Latin America, particularly in Peru, Cuba and Colombia.
Dr. Fiorella Montero Díaz
Royal Holloway
Fiorella Montero Diaz was born in Lima, Peru and is now based in London. Fiorella has a broad background in music, she first trained as a classical pianist and went on to a degree in sound engineering, before settling on ethnomusicology. In 2008 she completed an M.Mus in Ethnomusicology at Goldsmiths University of London and in 2014, was awarded a PhD in Music from Royal Holloway University of London for the study: “Fusion as inclusion: A Lima upper class delusion?” This is an innovative exploration of how fusion music not only appears to facilitate the inclusion of subaltern and vulnerable communities, but also to help powerful social groups seek their own socio-cultural inclusion by critiquing their own whiteness, privilege and isolated social position within the nation. Fiorella is currently a research assistant at Royal Holloway University of London and the administrator of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology.
Miguel Fernández Labayen and Josetxo Cerdán Los Arcos
Universidadd Carlos III de Madrid
Miguel Fernández Labayen is assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. He is a member of the research group Televisión y Cine: Memoria, Representación e Industria (Tecmerin).
Josetxo Cerdán Los Arcos is visiting professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.He also has been artistic director of Punto de Vista, International Documentary Film Festival of Navarra (2010-2013). He has edited the books Mirada, memoria y fascinación (2001); Documental y Vanguardia (2005); Al otro lado de la ficción (2007); and Suevia Films-Caesáreo González.(2005); and Signal Fires: The cinema of Jem Cohen (2010). He is author of Ricardo Urgoiti. Los trabajos y los días (2007) and Del sainete al esperpento (2011). He has coordinated an M. A. in documentary production from 1998 to 2008. Principal interest areas are non-fiction film, Spanish cinema and transnational film.
Dr. Kariann Goldschmitt
University of Cambridge
Kariann Goldschmitt received her PhD in musicology in 2009 from UCLA and is Lecturer in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge. She previously held teaching and research appointments at Colby College (Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow of Non-Western Music) and New College of Florida (Visiting Assistant Professor). She studies popular music’s relationship to the global media industries since World War II with a focus on Brazilian music and national branding. She is currently completing a book manuscript titled, Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in the Global Cultural Industries. Her research has appeared in Luso-Brazilian Review, Popular Music and Society, and The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies, Vol. 1 (edited by Sumanth Gopinath and Jason Stanyek), among others.
Dr. Kris Juncker
University of Warwick
Kristine Juncker has a Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia University, USA, and is a writer and educator. Her first book was Afro-Cuban Religious Arts (2014) from the University Press of Florida. She is now a teaching fellow at the University of Warwick. Previously, she held a fellowship at the Institute of Latin American Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, where she has begun to work on a second book about twentieth-century photographic media in Cuba and international outreach.
Dr. Leslie Marsh
George State University
Dr. Leslie L. Marsh is an Associate Professor at Georgia State University (Atlanta, GA, USA) and specializes in Hispanic and Lusophone film and media studies. Her research focuses on visual practices (film, television, photography and alternative media) that pose challenges to the boundaries of belonging and intervene in the creation of new political imaginations. Another area of specialization is Hispanic and Lusophone women’s cultural production. Her book Brazilian Women’s Filmmaking: From Dictatorship to Democracy (University of Illinois Press, 2012) examines the diverse practices of women filmmakers in Brazil from the military dictatorship to the present. She is currently completing a manuscript titled “Rebranding Brazil: New economies of identity in film, television and media” and co-editing with Dr. Hongmei Li the volume “The Middle Class in Emerging Societies: Consumers, Lifestyles and Markets” (Routledge, forthcoming). In her free time, she enjoys cooking, gardening and playing tennis.
Liz Harvey
UCL
Liz is currently working towards her PhD at UCL, London, having previously completed an MA & BA in Latin American studies at the same institution. Her research focuses on the question of national identity in Costa Rica and how this theme has been explored through literature and film, specifically looking at creative explorations of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.
Dr. María Chiara D'Argenio
King's College London
Maria Chiara D'Argenio is an affiliated Research Fellow at the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies of King’s College London. She has a MA in History of Film & Visual Media (Birkbeck College) and a PhD in Hispanic Studies (University L'Orientale, Naples). She worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow on Cinema & Literature and lectured Spanish American Literature at L'Orientale and lectured Latin American Visual Culture at King’s College London. She has in preparation a special issue of the Revista Iberoamericana on ‘Illustrated Magazines, Visuality and Modernity in Latin America’ and a monograph on photography, cinema and modernity in Peru. Her most recent articles include ‘A Poetic Cine Urgente: Experimentalism and Revolution in Santiago Alvarez’s Documentary Films’ (Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas 11: 2) and ‘A Contemporary Andean Type: the Representation of the Andean World in Claudia Llosa’s Films’ (Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 8: 1).
Dr. María Paz Peirano-Olate
University of Kent
María Paz Peirano is a Social Anthropologist from Universidad de Chile. She holds Postgraduate degrees in both Documentary film and Film Studies, from Universidad de Chile and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile respectively. She has recently completed her PhD in Social Anthropology at University of Kent. Her doctoral research involves an ethnographic approach to film as social practice, focusing on the construction of contemporary Chilean cinema in transnational settings.
Dr. Nick Morgan
University of Newcastle
Nick Morgan is Degree Programme Director of the MA in Latin American Interdisciplinary Studies at Newcastle University. Previously a lecturer and researcher in cultural studies at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, his work has focused on a set of interlocking themes which include the analysis of racial discourse, nation building, citizen participation and popular mobilization in vulnerable communities in Colombia, Venezuela and Panama. Alongside his work on political discourse analysis and ethnography he has also published on Colombian cinema and journalism. His most recent publication is “De Bucaramanga pa’arriba: Chávez on the borders of Colombian nationalism” (Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research) and his current research programme centres on community activism in Quibdó, on Colombia’s Pacific coast.
Nicola Astudillo-Jones
University of Manchester
Nicola Astudillo-Jones is currently in the third year of her PhD in the Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies department at the University of Manchester. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Spanish from the University of St Andrews and a Masters in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from the University of Manchester. Her research investigates the contemporary production and consumption of Latin American culture in the city of Manchester and how British consumers engage with Latin American culture as a means of individual identity construction.
Prof. Nuria Triana Toribio
University of Kent
Professor and Head of Hispanic Studies in the School of European Languages and Cultures and co-director of the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Film and the Moving Image, University of Kent (UK). She is the author of Spanish National Cinema (Routledge 2003 and co-author of The Cinema of Alex de la Iglesia (MUP, 2007). She co-edits the book series ‘Spanish and Latin American Filmmakers’ and the journal Film Studies for MUP. She has published on film festivals, contemporary Spanish film cultures, transnational financing, production and dissemination of Spanish cinema and film periodicals. Her most recent work has appeared in the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies. Her current project is on the Spanish Academia de cine and the Goya awards.
Paula Gómez Carrillo
LSE
Paula Gómez Carrillo is a current postgraduate student in the department of Media and Communications at The London School of Economics and Political Science. She undertook a postgraduate study in Social Anthropology at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Paula’s research has mainly focused on nation branding, advertising and its circuits of production, and the cultural industries in Colombia and Latin America. She has a professional background in the advertising and media industries, working for Publicis and Universal McCann.
Pedro Quijada
Univeristy of Minnesota
Pedro F. Quijada is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Minnesota. He is interested in exploring processes/events such as the Mexican Miracle, the Ten Years of Spring in Guatemala, the Costa Rican Civil War, the military reforms of the 1970s in Honduras, and the 1948 Revolution in El Salvador. His current research actually explores El Salvador during the years 1948 to 1977, a period of time during which this nation experienced a wave of economic diversification projects that eventually positioned her as the leader of the Central American Common Market of the 1960s.
Ray Freddy Lara
Universidad de Guadalajara
Investigador pre-doctoral en la Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU) (País Vasco, España). Miembro del Grupo de Estudios sobre América Latina y el Caribe (GEALC) de la UPV/EHU (http://www.gealc.org/). Licenciado en Estudios Internacionales y Maestro en Ciencias Sociales con especialidad en Relaciones Internacionales y Estudios del Pacífico por la Universidad de Guadalajara (U.de G.) (Jalisco, México). Profesor en el Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades y en el Sistema de Universidad Virtual (SUV) de la U. de G. Consultor independiente en políticas públicas, mercadotecnia de ciudad y tecnologías de la información y comunicación, actualmente colaborando para la Alianza Euro-Latinoamericana de Cooperación entre Ciudades (Proyecto AL-LAs) (https://www.proyectoallas.net/home).
Svitlana Biedarieva
Courtauld Institute of Art
Svitlana Biedarieva is a PhD student in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. The topic of her PhD thesis is “Challenging the Urban Legacies of the Olympics: Mexico 1968-1994 and Moscow 1980-1991”. Svitlana completed her BA in Social Sciences at the National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” (Ukraine, 2009), MA in Semiotics at the University of Tartu (Estonia, 2011) and MA in History of Art at the Courtauld (2013). Her research interests extend from art of post-Soviet countries to Mexican and Latin American art after 1968.