Research teams and projects

The Second Conquest. Land, nature and inequality in Latin America (1860s-1910s)

Rhythms of Re-solidarization in the Face of Violence: Frictions of collectivity and land in Milpa Alta

The project analyzes the resistance to the new General Land Reorganization Program (PGOT) in the case of Milpa Alta, Mexico City.

Practices of Territorial Care. An affective analysis of peasant collective strategies in the context of coffee cultivation

The project analyzes the responses of different communities and local organizations in the global south to the challenging conditions created by crises, understanding their ways of life and collective struggles from an affective perspective.

The last Länderkundler in the Tropics: German geography on agrarian colonization in Latin America from 1947 to 1975.

The project analyzes how the last generation of regional geographers (Länderkundler) reformulated classical concepts of German geography to explain agrarian colonization in Latin America between 1945 and 1970.

Agro-industrial corporations at the limits of the transformation of land into capital in Latin America. Entangled economic histories in the 20th century

The project analyzes the mechanisms used by KWS Saat and Nestlé to dispose of land in Latin America and their symbolic and ecological implications.

'Gran Cacao' and coloniality in the Caribbean: Land grabbing, wealth and power of the Tovars in Aragua, Venezuelay

This project does a collective biography of Tovar family, to investigate the appropriation and concentration of land in Aragua from the second half of the 19th century until the second decade of the 20th century, the consequent generation and accumulation of wealth, as well as the circumscription of these large estates within the global economic structure.

Of missionaries and revolutionaries. A history of liberation theology in Latin America (1960-1980)

The project focuses on the broad cultural, social, and economic involvement of pastoral agents and laymen of the progressive Catholic church in urban and rural landscapes of Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s.

Consuming chicken in Mercosur.Continuities and changes in food systems and practices in the cities of Paraná, Curitiba and Asunción (since 1990)

The project comparatively addresses local changes in the distribution and consumption of chicken meat. This includes critical debates on the consumption of industrially produced chicken, taking into account contemporary discourses on (good) nutrition, health and wealth.

Internalizing colonialism: agrarian history and inequalities in Brazil

The project compares the formation of agricultural credit institutions and the legal redefinition of land as a financial asset in the Brazilian Empire and the Empire of France in the second half of the 19th century.

Wealth and access of land in the 21st century: elites in territorial development in the Andean region

The project addresses the notion of political constellations, from the analysis of the role of elites as actors of territorial governance structures, and the articulation between actors involved in extractive mining activities and landowning elites.

The Banana Elites: Historiographical study of the consolidation of banana plantations in the province of Guayas, Ecuador, between 1890 and 1930

The project analyzes the hacienda owners and their influence on the regional social and political fabric in the province of Guayas between 1890 and 1930, before the boom of the banana industry. It will consider land as a capital that allowed an elite to influence social, cultural, political and economic interactions.

The role that landowning elites play in land use planning processes and in territory development strategies: a comparative analysis between Ecuador and Colombia during the neoliberal period

The project studies the role of landowning elites in Ecuador and Colombia in land use planning processes and territorial development strategies.

Metal mining and agrarian elites. New dynamics of concentration and land grabbing

The project analyzes the relationships between mining actors and landowning elites in the context of the development of mining projects and how land plays an important role in the process of capital reproduction.

Technique, nature and territorialization strategies of large agricultural producers in MATOPIBA - Brasil

The project analyzes the territorialization process of large agricultural producers in MATOPIBA (Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia) and their relationship with nature based on technology and capitalist accumulation.

Agrarian elites and the state: Argentina, Brazil and Mexico during the neoliberal decade (1988-2000) and late neoliberalism (2000-2019)

The project proposes to study comparatively the relationship between the economic elites linked to agricultural and agro-industrial activity from Argentina, Brazil and Mexico and the state during the periods of neoliberal reforms (1988-2000) and the late neoliberalism of the 21st century (2000-2019).

The Commodification of the Brazilian Cerrado: Socio-environmental, cultural and political aspects of agricultural expansion

The main objective of this research is to analyze the expansion of the agricultural frontier in the Brazilian cerrado and its contribution to the process of wealth production through spoliation and the transformation of rural land into income.

Agribusiness territories for sustainability in Central America: management, nature valorization and socio-ecological changes

This doctoral project aims to analyze the contemporary forms of production of agribusiness territories through the use of the idea of sustainability in Central America, in order to understand the forms of managerial management, valorization of nature and socio-ecological changes experienced in its implementation process.

Forests in the socio-ecological transition. A perspective for forest history in Gran Chaco. Historical limits of sustainability in a context of capitalist exploitation. (1900-2020)

The project analyzes specific cases of forest evolution that allow a better understanding of the functioning of the socio-ecological transition, its causes and effects in different regions of the Gran Chaco. The specific issues can be related to changes in the area occupied by forests (deforestation or reforestation processes) or to changes in their composition.

The role of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association (IFAMA) in the hegemony of agribusiness in Brazil and Argentina.

The project aims to analyze the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association (IFAMA), questioning its social relevance by sharing economic interests, sociability networks and symbolic references that have shaped the political agenda of the so-called agribusiness in Brazil and Argentina.

Revisiting the border movement: Argentina, Brazil and Chile at the turn of a new century (1889-1929), a comparative history essay

The project seeks to reflect on the process of land commodification in the areas of the advancing food frontier in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reviewing records, legislation, documents, arrangements, writings. Consolidated and disputed agrarian historiographies when thinking about the role of agriculture in Chile, Brazil and Argentina before the Great Depression of 1929. Café del Oeste paulista

The forest model and the ecological transformation of the landscape in the Southern Cone. Critical analysis of the model of forest production in the cases of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay from 1980-2020

The project identifies the establishment of "silviculture" as a specific model for the transformation of land into capital in the Southern Cone countries and its ecological transformation of the landscape.

The Anthropocene in Argentina. Soil, oil and water. A study of land use in the Colorado River Basin (1960-2020)

This project investigates the use of water resources in the Colorado River Basin in the period 1960-2020 and the socio-environmental deterioration that this has entailed. To this end, it proposes a historical-environmental study of the agro-export and extractivist models of the second half of the 19th and 20th centuries in the basin.

Technology at the service of wine quality in Mendoza, (cc. 1970-1990)

The research project is aimed at studying the initial conditions and the role of social actors in the province of Mendoza that resulted modernization of the winemaking process. In particular, this project analyzes the R&D&I process in winegrowing in this province from the late 1960s to the early 1990s.

From the decline of the Porfiriato to the fury of agrarianism. Two views on agriculture and society in Atlixco, Puebla. Carlos Maurer and Francisco Lozano. 1906 -1938

The project explores the transit of agriculture in the privileged Val de Cristo -today known as the city and valley of Atlixco- when the modernization of its 48 agricultural enterprises (ranches and haciendas) was abruptly interrupted, which, together with its 7 textile factories, made this geographic contiguous area one of the development poles of the State of Puebla.

Charity and social prestige: the benefactors of Puebla's public assistance during the Porfiriato

The project analyzes the distinction and social prestige behind the motivations of benefactors to finance charitable works during the Porfiriato.

Conserved land and carbon offsets as means of wealth (re)production

The project analyzes ecosystem conservation management on the connection between ecosystem conservation through forest carbon offset schemes and the ownership of the land where the projects are located, through the investigation of the production of value in capitalist terms.