Staff
Pablo Piccato
Director
Pablo Piccato (B.A. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1989; Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin, 1997) is professor at the Department of History and Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies, Columbia University. His research and teaching focus on modern Mexico, particularly on crime, politics, and culture. Among books and articles published in the US and Latin America, his work includes City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900-1931 (2001), Actores, espacios y debates en la historia de la esfera pública en la ciudad de México (2005, coedited with Cristina Sacristán), True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico (2009, coedited with Robert Buffington), The Tyranny of Opinion: Honor in the Construction of the Mexican Public Spherre (2010) and in Social History 35:2 (2010): “Public sphere in Latin America: A map of the historiography.”He is working on poet Salvador Díaz Mirón, and on Mexican civil society’s responses to crime.
Since coming to Columbia, Professor Piccato has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of History, Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, member of the University Senate and of the executive committees of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese as well as ILAS. He has been a fellow and is member of the International Advisory Board of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego. In Mexico he has taught courses at universities in Mexico City, Morelia, Xalapa, and Culiacán. He was a member of the editorial board of Signos Históricos and is member of the boards of Law and History Review and the Hispanic American Historical Review.
https://sites.google.com/site/pablopiccato2/
Marc A. Hertzman
Director, Center for Brazilian Studies
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Marc A. Hertzman became Director of the Center in 2012. Professor Hertzman was trained as a historian of Brazil, but has broad research and teaching interests which stretch across multiple disciplines, Latin America, and the African Diaspora. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2008 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he spent two years as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Latin American Studies at Wesleyan University, where he taught courses about music, comparative colonialisms, Brazilian history and culture, and intellectual and cultural property. His doctoral thesis won the 2009 New England Council of Latin American Studies Best Dissertation Award.
His work has appeared in Journal of Latin American Studies and The Hispanic American Historical Review. He is currently completing a book manuscript on samba, race, and intellectual property in post-abolition Brazil. He is also preparing two articles, one about historical and musicological theory and method, and another, in honor of Wiebke Ipsen, on female soldiers of color in nineteenth-century Latin America.
Maritza E. Colón-Fermín
Executive Director
Maritza joined ILAS in 2012. She received her B.A. and M.A. degrees from New York University, both with specializations in Latin American history. Most recently, she was the Department Administrator at the Department of History at Columbia University and also held the same position at the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures. From 2000-2008 she was the Assistant Director at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at NYU. In that capacity she played an important role in developing their Quechua language program, establishing collaborations with foundations, and partnering with Columbia in our successful joint application for a Title VI grant.
Seth Fein
Director of Graduate Studies
Professor Fein's work focuses on the crossborder Americas and audiovisual culture. He was a professor of history at Yale (2002-2010) where he taught graduate and undergraduate course on the international and transnational histories of the Americas. He currently teaches in Columbia's departments of Latin American & Caribbean Studies and History. His book, Transnational Projections: The United States in the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema, will be published by Duke.
He is now completing the research and writing of a collection of essays, The Idea of the Western Hemisphere, which includes studies of the Pan American Highway and of U.S. foreign policy's use of Latin American television in the 1960s, which is also the subject of a documentary -- Our Neighborhood -- that he is now directing. Fein has commented on Washington's post-9/11 use of TV in the Middle East and consulted on historical documentaries about moving images; he appears in the BBC’s The Thirties in Colour (2008). He is also currently co-making (with Sophie Ziner) a documentary about the boundary-defying socioculture of radio-control car, plane, and helicopter enthusiasts who drive and fly in Flushing, Queens. Fein did his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin.
Eliza Kwon-Ahn
Student Affairs Coordinator
Eliza graduated in 1997 with BA in East Asian Languages & Area Studies, Spanish, and Portuguese from Rutgers University. As a Henry Rutgers Scholar, she conducted a graduate level research on "Koreans in Brazil: A Cultural Study of Life Between Two Cultures." She also received her MA in Latin American & Caribbean Studies and an Advanced Certificate in Museum Studies from New York University in 2001. Prior to joining ILAS in June 2003, she worked for different organizations, including as a Latin American Sales & Marketing Manager for a multinational company and as Project Research Assistant for "Brazil: Body and Soul" Exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. Her interest in Latin America is mainly in Brazil, Arts & Cultures, Immigration & Cultural Assimilation, National Identity, and Social and Education Development.
Esteban Andrade
Program Manager, ILAS and Center for Brazilian Studies
Esteban received his BA in Political Science with concentration in Latin American Studies from Manhattanville College. As a Graduate Division of Arts & Sciences Fellowship Recipient, he received his MA in Spanish Literature from St. John’s University, where he worked as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Committee for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS). Prior to joining ILAS, Esteban worked as the Regional Program Coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), where he helped create new partnerships with various academic and research institutions in Latin America, as well as developing project proposals for institutions such as the National Science Foundation, World Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank.
Sean Knowlton
Research Librarian
As the Latin American and Iberian Studies Librarian at Columbia University, Sean selects research materials in all subject areas from or about the Caribbean, Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. He provides personalized research assistance to both students and faculty and collaborates with faculty on library instruction sessions for their courses. Sean received an MA in Hispanic Literature and an MS in Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His MA thesis, entitled "Alvar Fáñez in four medieval texts: transformations of an epic hero," explores the literary incarnations of this historical figure associated with Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar. Sean's current interests include Brazil, Cuba, digital resources, and research services.
Thomas J. Trebat
Director of the Columbia Global Center, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Professor Tom Trebat is the Director of the new Global Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and is also the former Executive Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies and of the Institute’s Center for Brazilian Studies. Tom joined Columbia after a lengthy career on Wall Street dedicated to economic research on Latin America. Prior to joining ILAS in February 2005, Tom was Managing Director and Head of the Latin America team in the Economic and Market Analysis department of Citigroup. He joined Citicorp Securities in 1996 as the head of Emerging Market Research. Previously, he worked at Bankers Trust, the Ford Foundation, and Chemical Bank. As a senior international economist at Bankers Trust, he was involved in many aspects of country debt negotiations in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America during the 1980s. At the Ford Foundation, he served for four years as the Regional Director for Latin America and Caribbean Programs. At Chemical Bank, Tom organized and directed the emerging markets research group. Mr. Trebat has a Ph.D in economics from Vanderbilt University and remains active in teaching and publishing. He is also a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. His book, “Brazil's State-owned Enterprises: A Case Study of the State as Entrepreneur,” was published by Cambridge University Press in 1983.
