Argentina: Social Movements and Human Rights

Faculty and Staff

Brenda Pereyra, Academic Director
Brenda Pereyra is presently a PhD candidate at the University of Buenos Aires' prestigious College of Social Sciences. A trained social worker after earning her BA from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in 1989, Ms. Pereyra has been a faculty member at the University of Buenos Aires and the National University of Lanús for the past 18 years, teaching a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses. Ms. Pereyra also holds an MA in social politics from the University of Buenos Aires. Her emphasis has been in supervising senior theses, supervising pre-professional practices, and teaching analysis and observation of social problems in Argentina. During the summer of 2008, Ms. Pereyra was the recipient of the Linnaeus-Palme scholarship to conduct research and teach at Lund University. While in Sweden, she participated in different courses, teaching about social movements in Argentina and social work in Latin America.

Human rights are inherently a part of Ms. Pereyra's work, with social inequality, labor rights, and combating poverty salient areas of expertise. Ms. Pereyra has collaborated and consulted with diverse stakeholders throughout South America, from governmental entities to community organizations, working to combat current inequities. In an ever-changing world, where movement along international borders is more fluid than ever, Ms. Pereyra's research also explores the phenomenon of migration in Argentina, specifically within Buenos Aires. Currently, her main area of research is evaluating the reaction of impoverished neighborhood organizations to national economic crises. Ms. Pereyra is working on groundbreaking research looking at community soup kitchens and unpacking collective coping strategies developed in the city of Lanús in Buenos Aires Province. Ms. Pereyra's most recent published work focuses on migration, globalization, and gender in Argentina and Chile. Her other publications span a wide spectrum from microcredit, voter registration, and voting rights, to elements present in a healthy citizenry.

Ms. Pereyra was the academic director of SIT Study Abroad's Southern Cone: Regional Integration, Development, and Social Change program from 2002 until she helped to create the Argentina: Social Movements and Human Rights program in 2006. Running a program focused on human rights for four years has given her broad experience on different aspects of this topic in the context of Argentina. Working with students to understand the interrelationship between social movements and human rights has been particularly rewarding.

Ana Laura Lobo, Associate Director
Ana Laura Lobo is a sociologist. She has a master’s degree in social investigation from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and has finished her doctorate work in social sciences at UBA; in the following months, she will defend her thesis. Having received scholarships from UBA, CONICET, and Fundación Carolina, she is now developing her postgraduate research at the Gino Germani Research Institute, part of UBA’s Social Sciences Faculty.

Ana Laura has been a lecturer at UBA as well as a postgraduate lecturer at the Walter Benjamin Foundation in the fields of sociology, political science, and social construction of collective memory. In 2011, she was the winner of the Best Master’s Thesis on Recent History and Memory Contest, organized by the Latin American Studies Association. She was also awarded First Mention in the Latin American School for Social Sciences (FLACSO) Democracy and Human Rights Essay Contest: “Twenty years of democracy: history in light of the ideas that have shaped it.” Ana Laura has been a technical consultant for Programa de Inclusión Social Envión, an educational and social inclusion program administered by the town of Avellaneda, where Ana Laura was born and currently lives.

Eliana Ferradás, Program Assistant
Eliana is about to finish her undergraduate studies in history at the University of Buenos Aires. She has collaborated for several years in Fundación La Alameda, an organization focused on human trafficking, and has taken several courses and seminars related to human rights.

Lecturers for this program typically include:

Pablo Vommaro, Ph.D., Historian
Dr. Vommaro is a historian whose main area of teaching and research is the recent history of social movements in Argentina. He holds a Ph.D. in social sciences and a B.A. in history from Universidad de Buenos Aires. His dissertation was entitled “Politics, territory and community: urban social organizations in the southern area of Buenos Aires (1970-2000)”. Dr. Vommaro is also a researcher at the Oral History Program at Universidad de Buenos Aires. Additionally, he is a member of the Foundation for Political and Social Research and part of the Study Group on Social Protest and Collective Action, Instituto Gino Germani, Universidad de Buenos Aires. He coordinates the CLACSO work group “Youth and new political practices in Latin America” and is involved with the Latin American Program of Distance Learning in Social Sciences. He is the author of several articles published in collections, as well as national and international journals. His areas of research are: the history of urban social organizations with a territorial base; the political participation and practices of youth; oral history; and recent Argentine history.

Virginia Manzano, Ph.D., Anthropologist
Dr. Manzano is an anthropologist specializing in social movements. She has conducted extensive fieldwork with “piquetero” groups in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires. She holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Universidad de Buenos Aires and a post-doctoral scholarship from the Institute of Anthropological Sciences at Universidad de Buenos Aires. Her current research project is entitled “Practices, processes and state dynamics: ethnography of the daily relations between public officials and unemployed organizations in Buenos Aires”. She is also the co-director of the program “Power, politics and processes of resistance: an anthropological study of social movement practices in Argentina.” Dr. Manzano is a lecturer at several universities, including Universidad de Buenos Aires, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, and Universidad Tres de Febrero. Her research areas are: political anthropology; state and social movements; unemployment and social movements; occupation of public and private spaces in the city of Buenos Aires; and the fight for intercity housing.

Matías Triguboff, Ph.D., Anthropologist
Dr. Triguboff is a researcher who has focused his work on the formation of neighborhood assemblies and the process of decentralization of the local government of the city of Buenos Aires. He holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Universidad de Buenos Aires and a postdoctoral scholarship from CONICET at the Institute of Anthropological Sciences, Universidad de Buenos Aires. His current research project is entitled: “Communes in the city of Buenos Aires: an analysis of a complex relationship between State and civil society”. He is a lecturer at the School of Political Science, Department of Anthropological Sciences, Universidad de Buenos Aires. His research areas are: political anthropology; the state; collective action; social movements and citizen participation.

Andrés Ruggeri, Anthropologist
Mr. Ruggeri is an anthropologist who has been involved with the recuperated factories movement and coordinates programs at Universidad de Buenos Aires that provide different resources to these social movements. He is the director of the Continuing Studies Program, Universidad Abierta, at Universidad de Buenos Aires, which is related to the Documentation Center of Recuperated Factories. Mr. Ruggeri coordinates the research team, “Recuperated factories and self-management processes” and directs the training team for workers of the Argentina Federation of Energy Workers (FETERA-CTA). He also participates in a research program on scientific-technological transference to recuperated factories. He is the author of several articles on recuperated factories and self-management and the co-author of the book Recuperated Factories in Argentina.

Ernesto Cussianovich, M.A., Economic history
Mr. Cussianovich holds an M.A. in economic history from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a B.A. in history from Universidad de Buenos Aires. He is a history lecturer at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella and Universidad Palermo and has also been a history lecturer at Universidad de Buenos Aires. He is currently a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme. Mr. Cussianovich has worked and studied in France, the United Kingdom, and Japan. His teaching and research areas include: Argentine and Latin American history; state theory and public policy.

Valeria Barbuto, Anthropologist and Human Rights Researcher
Ms. Barbuto has worked for ten years at the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS), one of the most important Argentine human rights organizations. As part of CELS, she is a human rights researcher for the Program of Memory and the Fight Against Impunity of State Terrorism. Her research is focused on justice processes, reparation, and the memory politics of serious human rights violations. Ms. Barbuto is a member of the political and legal anthropology research team at the School of Anthropology, Universidad de Buenos Aires. This group includes researchers and professors focused on institutional violence, human rights, and democracy.

Maria Capurro, Human Rights Expert
Ms. Capurro holds a law degree from Universidad de Buenos Aires. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. She worked for many years at Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, one of Argentina’s most prominent human rights organizations. She currently works for the human rights organization Memoria Abierta, coordinating a group of human rights researchers. Ms. Capurro is also a member of a research group at the Human Rights Center, Universidad Nacional de Lanús. Additionally, she is part of a project on the advancement of child rights, supported by UNICEF Argentina.

Credits: 16

Duration: 15 weeks

Program Base: Buenos Aires

Language Study: Spanish

Prerequisites: 3 semesters Spanish and relevant coursework. Read more...