The Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS) and the IEAT parabenize the professor Agustín Lao-Montes of the University of Masschusetts Amherst for his approval at the CALAS-IEAT 2024 chair program. The professor will have a stay of three months at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, in Belo Horizonte.

For the current call, projects are presented to study the articulations between Identities and crises in Latin America. The winning project entitled Grietas en la Crisis Civilizatoria: Nuevas Constelaciones políticas y Avatares del Nuevo Progresismo en Brasil y Colombia was selected for its high relevance for Brazilian and Latin American society in general. The research proposes a contrapontistic analysis of the policies of new progressism, with a focus on its ethnic-racial and sexual policies, and on the relationship between the State and the black and feminist movements in Brazil and in Colombia.

Agustín Lao-Montes is an Afro-descendant intellectual activist of Puerto Rican origin, professor in historical sociology and currently working as a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, where he is also a researcher at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and professor of Ph.D in African-American Studies. He published several books and a large number of articles on topics such as Globalization, Social Movements, Urban Quests, Ethnic-Racial Identities and Racism, Caribbean Critical Thinking and Afrodiasporic and Decolonial Theory. African Studies and Intercultural Education. We wish Professor Lao-Montes a pleasant stay in Belo Horizonte and we also thank the other contest participants who presented high-quality projects.

(Communication office at CALAS, University of Guadalajara, Mexico)