Costa Rican president opens CALACS conference

York University graduate students and faculty were among the Canadian participants in the annual CALACS conference. Pictured here are Felipe Montoya of FES at York U, Andrea Carrion, PHD student at Carleton University and Carlota McAllister, director of CERLAC.
York University graduate students and faculty were among the Canadian participants in the annual CALACS conference. Pictured here are Felipe Montoya of FES at York U, Andrea Carrion, PHD student at Carleton University and Carlota McAllister, director of CERLAC.
President of Costa Rica, Luis Guillermo Solis, gave the opening address at the annual CALACS conference.
President of Costa Rica, Luis Guillermo Solis, gave the opening address at the annual CALACS conference

Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solís presented the inaugural address during the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CALACS), which is housed at the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) at York University.

The conference, held July 8 to 10 at the University of Costa Rica (UCR) in San José and co-sponsored by the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO),  focused on Critical Panamericanisms: Solidarities, Resistances, and Territories.

It drew more than 100 participants from South and Central America, as well as Canada.

There were 12 former and current CERLAC-based York University graduate students and faculty members who presented papers or assisted in the organization of the conference.

CERLAC Director Carlota McAllister, as ex-officio member of the CALACS Board, received a Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Connections grant for a series of keynote panels on topics related to the conference theme of Critical Panamericanisms. She chaired the SSHRC keynote panel in which Felipe Montoya, a member of the CERLAC Executive Committee and the Chair of Neotropical Conservation in York U’s Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES), spoke on the the rights of nature and extractive economies.

Simon Granovsky-Larsen, who completed his doctorate in political science at York University last fall, was honored with the 2015 CALACS Outstanding Dissertation Award for his work “Within and Against the Market: The Guatemalan Campesino Movement Under Neoliberal Peace.”

York University graduate students and faculty were among the Canadian participants in the annual CALACS conference. Pictured here are Felipe Montoya of FES at York U, Andrea Carrion, PHD student at Carleton University and Carlota McAllister, director of CERLAC.
York University graduate students and faculty were among the Canadian participants in the annual CALACS conference. Above: From left, Felipe Montoya, a member of the CERLAC Executive Committee and the Chair of Neotropical Conservation in York U’s Faculty of Environmental Studies, Andrea Carrion, PHD student at Carleton University and Carlota McAllister, director of CERLAC.

He was congratulated by Solís, who is a former history professor at the UCR and a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Michigan.

John Carlaw, CALACS coordinator and CERLAC research associate who is preparing his dissertation on Canadian immigration policy, participated in the launch of a partnership between CALACS and the Regional Network of Civil Organizations for Migration (RRCOM). He is also involved with a new CALACS working group on migration, one of the principal themes of the San José meetings.

For more information or to become a member, visit the CALACS website.