SLAS Events
Annual Conference | Annual Lecture
Annual Conference
The conference is the key event in our calendar, attracting 200-350 participants. It takes place during the Easter vacation in different locations each year.
Academic panels vary widely, from economics to music via anthropology, politics, history, literature, geography and film. We have a keynote speaker and social events which in the past have included visits to galleries, film festivals and which culminate in the conference dinner with salsa dancing.
PILAS runs research workshops for postgraduate students and all panels are strongly encouraged to include at least one postgraduate speaker. Postgraduate attendance is facilitated by the conference bursary.
Funding is available to assist Latin American scholars who are presenting a paper at the SLAS conference with their travel expenses.
SLAS Conference 2010
Friday 9 to Saturday 10 April hosted by the University of Bristol.
The conference is intended to be wide ranging, and the panels reflect themes spanning and linking across the arts and social science disciiplines. For a full list of panels click here.
The plenary lecture will be given by Professor Steve Stern, entitled "The Paradoxes of Truth: Reckoning with Pinochet and the memory question in Chile". Discover more about his research interests and approach, click here for a link to his website.
Those interested in presenting a paper should contact an appropriate panel, providing a short abstract (around 250 words). Contact details for the panel convenors are available on the list of panels.
Further details can be found at the conference website here. Any enquiries should be sent to slas-2010@bristol.ac.uk.
Reports of previous SLAS conferences.
SLAS Conference 2009 Leeds [Word]
SLAS Conference 2008 Liverpool [Word]
SLAS Conference 2007 Newcastle [Word]
SLAS Conference 2006 Nottingham [Word]
SLAS Conference 2005 Derby
Instituted in 2004, the aim of these lectures is to present the ideas of leading public thinkers on contemporary Latin America.
2009 Swansea - Colin McEwan
‘Moctezuma: Fame, Fortune, and Misfortune’ Colin is Head of the Americas Section at the British Museum in London and has previously designed and curated a number of important exhibitions on the peoples of Patagonia and Amazonia.
2008 London - James Painter
‘Climate Change, Latin America and the Media’ James is a BBC reporter and has developed an impressive expertise in the fascinating field of politics and climate change in the region. His thought-provoking and important talk is available here [Word].
2007 Liverpool - Hugh O’Shaughnessy
‘Are we Keeping Up with Latin America?’ Journalist, co-founder of the Latin America Bureau and author of Pinochet: the Politics of Torture (LAB 1999) and (with Sue Branford) Chemical Warfare in Colombia: the Costs of Coca Fumigation (LAB 2005). Full Text of lecture here [Word].
2006 Essex - Richard Gott
'Latin America as a White Settler Society'. Journalist and author of Cuba: a New History (Yale 2005) and Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela (Verso, 2005). Published in the Bulletin of Latin American Research Volume 26 Issue 2 pp 269-289, April 2007.
2005 Manchester - Duncan Green
‘Twenty Years of Neoliberalism: Where does Latin American go From Here?' Head of Research, Oxfam; author of Silent Revolution: the Rise and Crisis of Market Economics in Latin America (LAB 2003) and Faces of Latin America (LAB, 1997).
2004 London - William Robinson
'Latin America and the Crisis of Global Capitalism: Opportunities, Challenges, Hazards.' Associate Professor of Sociology, Global Studies and Iberian Studies, University of California - Santa Barbara.